A Valdese Blog

The highlight of my day, yesterday

2012-02-14T16:11:00.000-05:00

First, happy Valentines Day to everybody who reads this.

Yesterday the highlight of my day was a little grocery shopping at Food Lion in Valdese. I've written about Food Lion before, and the alternate universe qualities of the experience, but just because I've written about something before has never stopped me from writing about it again.

Food Lion is a mid-sized supermarket (meaning it's not small by any means, but I've seen larger), in a small town. It is the ONLY supermarket in town, for a couple of years now. And though it's not that far to Morganton or Cajah's Mountain or even Hickory, most of the time Food Lion is where people in town end up going for their groceries.

If the people of Valdese were water, Food Lion would be the water purification plant.

If the people of Valdese the dark matter of space, then Food Lion would be a quantum anomaly where the universe contracts and expands simultaneously.

And so on.

Eventually everybody in town is going to go in there, buy something and leave. Because of that Food Lion of Valdese is a very big fish in a small pond. It exerts enormous influence.

The influence starts when you enter the store. Although there are no signs, no requirements and no physical barriers, the physical layout strongly encourages you to go to the produce section immediately after entering. You'd have to make a conscious effort to go any other way. Then once in the produce section, the physical layout strongly encourages you to go down the aisle at the end of the store. No physical barrier keeps you from going any other way, but you would have to make an effort. So you head down that aisle, and before you know it you are in the far corner of the store - right where they want you. The more you walk around, the more you buy.

Everybody in Valdese is subject to this subtle behavior control. Food Lion - the great leveler.

And it is a great leveler. It is possible for 2 people to go into Food Lion, fill up two carts, and not have bought a single thing in common. But over time, in a large enough population, people are going to buy the same things, and Food Lion will cater to the items that people buy. The good people of Valdese have a very similar Food Lion diet.

So any rate, I did a little light shopping at Food Lion yesterday. I got some milk and some cereal (nowhere near each other, btw), some chicken (parts is parts), ground turkey, a case of water, something for Pickles the Dog to gnaw on and some other stuff. Though one item I was going to get I didn't, because there were some people who apparently decided to camp out at the section right where the item I wanted was. They were elderly, and they weren't going to budge for awhile. So I did a quick cost/benefit analysis and decided it wasn't worth it and went paid for everything and left. I can only handle so much.

Shipping Costs

2012-02-07T16:13:00.002-05:00

This is yet another eBay related post. I'll think of something else to write about eventually. But for now.....

Sometime back we decided on a flat rate shipping for items we sell on eBay. We keep it pretty simple, and it works well in 95% of the cases. We deal with anything odd or out of the ordinary on a case by case basis as it is listed.

Domestically, we offer free shipping on virtually everything, and you can't get much simpler than that. We've been doing that for over a year now, and it works for us.

We've never offered free shipping internationally - it's just too expensive.

The United States Postal Service increased their rates on Jan 22, 2012. The news focused on the domestic rates for letters and postcards, but for us, that didn't matter. What we wanted to know, and what was surprisingly difficult to find out before it actually happened, was the new rates for first class packages, both domestic and international.   We ship out a lot of packages that weigh 2 or 3 ounces - and the cheapest (& frequently the quickest) way to send them is first class & first class international.

So this is what we found out.

First class domestic is actually cheaper now, because the post office no longer charges for delivery confirmation if you print the label online. Before Jan 22, the 2 & 3 ounce rate for an online label was $1.56, and they required you to purchase the delivery confirmation at $.19, for a total of $1.75.    After Jan 22, the rate went up to $1.64 for 2 or 3 ounces, but now delivery confirmation is added on for free. So it's 11 cents cheaper than before. That's good for us since we offer free shipping on these items, and over the course of a year that 11 cents is going to add up.

First class international is much more expensive. We differentiate international shipping between those items going to Canada, and those items going everywhere else.

Before Jan 22, USPS charged $1.98 for a 2 ounce package, and $2.24 for a 3 ounce package to Canada. Now the charge is $3.15 & $3.30, respectively.

For Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Australia etc the rate before Jan 22 was $2.59 for a 2 ounce package & $3.46 for a 3 ounce package. Now USPS charges $3.78 & $4.56, respectively.

As a seller, I have experienced international shipping rate sticker shock. The domestic changes were minimal from our point of view, but we were very surprised at the international increase. We were forced to increase our rates because of this, though we desperately did not want to.

International sales are a good chunk of our business. I'm afraid these increases will hurt our sales. This was not a minor increase, it was nothing we could come close to absorbing in the price of our items, and I'm not terribly happy about it.

In reality it won't affect everything - we'll send individual postcards & small photos internationally at the same rate as before. But CDVs, Cabinet Photos, Antique photos and many other things will be more expensive to ship internationally. That's just the way it's going to be.

Our eBay Month - Jan 2012

2012-02-01T21:02:00.002-05:00

All in all it was a good month, a little better than average, perhaps. Perhaps not. It was not as good as December or November, but on par with last January at least.

In fact the similarities between Jan 2012 & Jan 2011 are remarkable. Our net this month was less than $7.00 higher than our net in January 2011, but our expenses were also higher, so our gross in Jan 2012 was somewhat lower than a year ago.

In a remarkable co-incidence, our total number of transactions were exactly the same for both months. The types of transactions were distributed a little differently though - in Jan 2012 we sold fewer postcard "singles", and more photographs than we did in Jan 2011. That seems to be a trend for us, at least during the last 4 or 5 months, and I see no reason why it won't continue. Famous last words.

International sales continued to be a significant part of our business in January. We sent items to 13 countries (with Canada & the UK leading the way) and international sales accounted for about 20% of our total transactions and 21% or our net income. We sent a photograph to Jordan last month, a first for us, and received feedback for it a few days later. So cool.

Our net for December 2011 was significantly higher than Jan 2012, and our expenses were slightly lower, making our gross for the month quite a bit higher. Although we actually sold more postcard "singles" in Jan 2012 than we did in December 2011, we sold many, many more photographs in December. That more than made up for a slow postcard month.

The post office increased postage rates this month. We offer free shipping in the domestic USA, and that's not going to change. I've discovered that even though the post office increased 1st class domestic package rates, they've decided not to charge for delivery confirmation. As as result, 1st class postage has actually become cheaper for us after the change. Over the course of a year, that will add up. Everything else, however, has increased.

We do charge a flat rate shipping for international sales, and we've not changed our rates. It is a bit more expensive, but for the time being at least, we're not changing anything, international shipping wise.

So, January was a good but not a great month, perhaps slightly better (or not) than our monthly average for 2011. Business kind of slowed the 10 days of the month, and Feb has started off slowly, so we'll see how it goes.

Going to Sleep

2012-01-29T12:09:00.001-05:00

I admit, I'm not one to give advise about going to sleep. I suspect I do everything wrong, including the biggie, ingesting caffeine too late at night. Also, since I don't care for routines, and going to sleep is a routine, I generally do so grudgingly. Far from making my peace with the world, I frequently find myself somewhat irritated at having to give in to biology in this regard, so I'm probably doing everything wrong.

Furthermore, I don't understand sleep. I'm not alone in this, there are scientists who study sleep after all, so obviously there is a lot to learn about it. But I don't understand the basics of it. It happens, I can't question that, but I can certainly question why, because I don't really know. I'm curious about the transition. It's both gradual and sudden. There has to a instant where you are technically awake, then the next instant you aren't. I don't understand the process that goes on in a person's body that makes that happen.

The way I know I'm about to fall asleep is because at some point I start thinking unusual things. I have no control over this. Also, like my dreams, I can rarely remember it. That's too bad.

When you're asleep you cede control over everything, you're pretty much helpless. Dangerous storms, fire, people and lord knows what else could threaten you, and you have no clue until it's way to late. 'Cause you're asleep. Of course we have a dog who'll make a ton of noise if someone was trying to get into the house, so I guess that's a decent early warning system.

I know how terrible it can be when you can't sleep or are forced to stay awake or don't sleep well for long periods. I've worked all kinds of shifts in my life, and I've spent years in jobs where I was on call at all hours of the day and night, 7 days a week. It can wear you down.

Since I removed myself from the traditional work force back in 2006, I will admit that over all I get a lot more sleep than I used to. I don't work any kind of shift work, I'm not on call, I pretty much set my own schedules, for the most part there is a lot less to worry about or stress over, and in spite of myself, I generally sleep better.

I still don't understand it though, and I don't like it. Frequently when you're falling asleep, you have these body jerks. Sometimes its not much, sometimes it's your whole body. I don't know why that happens, but I know I'm not the only one it happens to, because once when I was working for Electronic Data Systems at the Baltimore GM Assembly plant (may it RIP), my fellow Systems Engineers and I (all of whom were on call, all the time), sat around discussing it at lunch. I'm fairly certain most of us did not get enough sleep.

Going to sleep and sleeping is a strange process. I suppose I have to admit it's natural, since most people do it on a regular basis. However, it seems to be a forced requirement of living, and I don't like it one bit.

Even though my tendency is to resist going to sleep, I'm not a morning person. I don't wake up quickly and jump out of bed refreshed and ready to go. I wake up slowly with a fair amount of grogginess, and find myself getting out of bed in stages: the sit and stare stage, the standing up slowly stage, the bumping into the dresser stage and so on. I don't understand any of this.

Routines

2012-01-16T13:46:00.004-05:00

I find myself thinking a lot about routines. One of my most common routines is the morning dog walk with Pickles the Dog. I notice that after awhile, at certain times and certain places, you see certain things. I began to notice many of the cars and drivers I see every day are the same as I saw the day before.   And eventually it dawned on me that I've become part of their routine. Many days they will see me with this goofy dog in the same general area at the same general time.

And that's just one of my routines. I don't really like routines, but I don't understand how a person can live without them.

There's a couple of people I see every now and then who drive around in a pick-up truck looking for discarded metal by the side of the road. Stuff people put out for garbage pick up. I assume they'll sell it for scrap somewhere, and I often wondered how much money a person can make doing that. My suspicion is somewhere between next to nothing and very little, but I don't know. The point is, their routine is completely different than mine, yet every now and then, the routines intersect.

Many, many years ago, shortly after I got out of the Army, I found myself living in Catonsville, MD - a suburb of Baltimore, and started a job located in Springfield, VA, on the other side of Washington, DC. That, dear readers, is a long commute.   Anyway, after a few weeks I began to notice things - on long drive, almost all with 6 to 8 lanes of traffic, I began to see the routines.

For example, shortly after I crossed into Virginia, and was heading down a hill with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge starting to become a reality in my mind, I frequently passed a large white box truck.  Its back door was raised and inside were 4 or 5 people sitting on the floor against the walls. I would pass this truck several times a week in the same general area, until I switched from day shift to evening shift.

On the return trip, as I was on I-95 north heading into Howard County, MD, I'd see this:  an old beat up dark colored car spewing smoke out of it's tail pipe, chugging along in the slow lane, the driver's window down (I'm assuming he had no A/C, cause it was quite hot), the driver smoking a pipe, with a bumper sticker that proudly proclaimed "Free At Last".    I saw this vehicle frequently when I was on the day shift, and always in the same area.

I noticed these two events because they were unusual, and I noticed them so often I began to look for them.

There's no telling how much I didn't notice. There's no telling how much was a one time event - someone traveling from Montreal to Miami who just happened to pass by along the way.

Routines intersect. It happens so often it can't be random.

Ah, The Russia House by John Le Carre

2012-01-08T16:10:00.003-05:00

Years ago I bought a CD by Metallica, because one day I was listening to the radio and I heard a song they covered, "Whiskey in the Jar". I recognized that song as something of a folk song, probably Irish. I had another version on another CD by the Pogues. I didn't feel the radio had done the Metallica version justice, it being radio and all, so I was interested in seeing how it really sounded on a half way decent sound system. Well I was surprise. This most metallic of hard rock bands did a very good job, I thought. There was a depth and richness to their version I did not expect. It was very well done.

The Russia House is like Metallica's version of Whiskey in the Jar. It has an extraordinary amount of richness and depth to it. It is a spy story, with Barley Blair being a reluctant spy, set in the final years of the Soviet Union. People are doing things that could cause them to end up in a Soviet prison or worse. Portions of it are quite tense, and especially as it approached the end, I was wondering what was going to happen. I didn't really expect what actually did happen.

When you get down to it, the book is about people. Human, very fallible, complex people, some who have goals which are perhaps at odds with what they should be.

This book had a good story & plenty of suspense, but I don't believe there was physical confrontations. No one shot anyone, nothing blew up, I don't think anyone even took a swing at anybody. But people spent a lot of time in various states of fear. And like the fog of war, no one quite knew the big picture, and there was a lot of disagreement about what had actually happened once it was over. Nothing was neat and tidy.

It is the anti-Icarus Agenda, and comes off being vastly more believable.

Our eBay Year - 2011

2012-01-04T21:31:00.000-05:00

As promised, this is my post about how our eBay business did last year. It may be an incoherent rambling kind of post - I'll at least try to keep some structure.

2011 was a good year, compared to 2010 & 2009.   Things kind of slipped in 2010, so 2011 was a very good year compared to 2010.

Our gross was 23% higher than in 2010, and our net was 28% higher than in 2010.   My first thought was that our expenses must have been lower, but that's not the case.   There's an old adage, it takes money to make money. Well, eBay, PayPal & just about every other business in existence has a very regressive type of fee structure. The less you sell, the greater the percentage you have to pay in fees, the less money you get to keep. When you sell more, the reverse happens, you pay less of a percentage in fees - it's an amazing thing when you finally cross that tipping point. Our expenses were a lot, at least in my opinion, and the difference in the percentage increase between gross and net I attribute to increased sales.

This increase in net and gross income came in a year that we've offered free domestic shipping on virtually everything we sell.   This is our first complete year offering free shipping, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the bottom line.   I track our shipping costs very closely, and it's a major expense. In fact it's our second highest expense every month (and year) without fail. Only our eBay fees are higher.  Free shipping only works if you know your costs, and can increase your sales. It worked for us.

Internationally, we charge a flat rate, based on the item sold - postcards will be less than Cabinet Photos, for example. Also, we charge less on items we send to Canada, simply because it costs less. I've learned over time how much it costs to ship to the various locations, and roughly how long it takes to get there, in most cases at least.

I've come across sellers who refuse to sell internationally, and that's fine, but I don't understand it. Possibly the items we sell, postcards and photographs, aren't high on the scamming list. Whatever it is, our problems have been very minimal. I can only remember one incident - in 2010 a person from Italy (yes, Italy), claimed he never received his item. It had been a month, so I refunded his money without any kind of argument. I did put him on our blocked buyers list though, because without going into detail, I had some suspicions.   And that is it - we've been selling internationally for over 5 years now, and that's the only issue we've had.

Our international sales accounted for 10% of our transactions, and 17% of our gross income in 2011. I don't know how that stacks up against other sellers, I don't know if that is good or bad or neither. But we're glad to have it.

In December 2011, we had our biggest single order for photos & postcards in our history - it was significant to us, and it was going to Poland. I packaged it up carefully, sent it off December 17th, and crossed my fingers. We received feedback for it this morning, and finally uncross my fingers. We haven't really had any bad experiences shipping internationally.

Speaking of international sales - our highest sales for 2011 went to Canada (by a wide margin), the UK, Poland, Germany, France & Australia, in that order. The only surprise on this list is Poland - and that was because of that one very large order in December. In 2011, for the first time we sent items to Peru, Thailand, Turkey & the Ukraine.

I track lots of things. Our best months in 2011 were, in order, Nov, Jun, Dec, Oct & Jan. We tend to sell more items in the middle of the week - Tues, Weds & Thurs., I'm not sure what I can do with that info, but there it is. I know our average and mean daily dollar amount for the year. I know the average amount we receive per transaction, and can split that out between auctions and fixed price. I know the average number of transactions per day, and the average number of items sold per day. I know how much we spend on postcards & the various photo types vs how much we're able to sell them for. I know how many items we've listed vs how many we've sold for the year.   I know what postcards subjects are most popular (believe it or not I track about 137 different subjects).

Photos are a different matter. I know which types have sold best for us, but subject matter is a different story. People who collect photos are not looking for the same thing as people who collect postcards.   Photos are somehow more vague, and not as easy to put your finger on. Photos are more of a feeling, at least for me.

The big change for us this year was the domestic free shipping. We also offer expedited shipping, and a 30 day return no hassle policy. If we sell you something and you don't like it when you receive it, just return it and we'll refund your money.   We're basically doing what eBay wants us to do in this regard, and in return (in theory) we should get a bump in the "best match" search results. I don't know if it had anything to do with our increased sales or not.

Here's another couple of things driving our sales, and oddly enough, something I'm not tracking. We're getting a lot of repeat customers. People returning multiple times over the year to buy things - that is a very good thing. And we're also getting a lot of multiple item purchases, and that is also very good. When someone buys several items at once, it adds up quickly.

We also do our best when it comes to customer service. Package nicely, ship quickly, answer questions, communicate and so on. I think excellent customer service is the most important ingredient in winning repeat customers. And it doesn't happen overnight.

So 2011 was better than 2010 (and also 2009).   We hope 2012, which has started off pretty well, will be better than 2011.

Our eBay Month - Dec 2011

2012-01-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

This post is just about December & the 4th quarter of 2011. I'll write another post to sum up the year in a couple of days.

December was a good month for us - better than October, also a good month, not quite as good as November, which was a very good month. I'd gladly take a year full of Decembers.

However, our sales of "single" postcards were down - in fact they were the lowest for the year by far. I don't know why. If we had sold our average amount, then December would have been our best month of the year. We got a fairly good price for them though, but for some reason we sold significantly less than average.

Our sales of photographs (Cabinets, CDVs, other Antique Photos, snapshots etc) were very good, on almost exactly the same level as November. This means we sold significantly more than average. And in December 2011, for the first time in our history we sold more photos than we did postcards. Something for us to ponder.

December also marked our highest photograph sales for a single order, ever. On December 17th we mailed out this large order to a buyer who (sigh) lives in Poland. We've yet to receive feedback or any indication that it's arrived, so fingers crossed for now.

Another interesting thing that happened was yesterday (Dec 31st) an item was returned to us from Germany, marked "insufficient address". It was pretty neat - it had the German custom sticker on it and everything. The other neat thing was that we had mailed it way back on September 14th - about 3 1/2 months ago, with an address label printed from the eBay sales record. We'd never heard a word from this person, no feedback, no emails, had no idea he hadn't received it. It was so long ago that the buyer could not leave feedback now if he wanted to. It was so long ago that the sales record was no longer available to us & we could not refund his money through eBay. So we sent him a message letting him know what happened and sent the back money via paypal to his paypal account. What this means is we did not get any fees back, and paypal will charge him fees, but its the best we can do, especially since there's no other communication going on. If he still wants the item I suppose he can contact us and we'll make arrangements.

The packaging survived quite well, which made me feel good.

Its always something. Its amazing how many weird things go on in a little 2 person business.

The 4th quarter of 2011 was the best quarter of the year, by far. In fact, it's better than any quarter we had in 2010 & 2009, so its the best quarter in the last 3 years. One of the quarters of 2008 may have been better because we were doing consignments back then, but 2008 vs 2011 is apples and oranges as far as our business goes. It was a very good 3 months for us

This is part of what's happening: we're getting a lot of repeat customers, and that is good. Repeat customers can drive a business. We're also getting a lot more sales of multiple items to a singer buyer than we used to, and that can add up quickly. And many of the repeat customers and multiple item buyers (sometimes they're the same people) are buying our photographs. We charge more for our photos than our postcards (because, they're generally worth more), and that has been driving our business, especially for the last 3 months.

January is starting off pretty well, so I hope it continues.

Finished The Icarus Agenda

2011-12-26T21:00:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I think I read a book simply because it's long, and I won't have to make a decision on what book to read next for awhile. Of course I don't have to read a book, as far as that goes, but I've almost always got one going. For awhile I had an "upstairs" book & a "downstairs" book, but the past few months I've only had the upstairs book, which I generally read in bed. If they have lots of a pages with small type, like Robert Ludlum's Icarus Agenda, it's going to take me awhile.

I almost always finish the book, even when it requires trudging through. Like this one.

I suppose this book would be described as a "thriller", no big surprise there. It is very action oriented, with strong characters doing things most mortals would never dream of. Strong is not always the same as believable.

Also par for the course is the whole set of assumptions behind the plot. Its a book about conspiracies. Not just run of the mill conspiracies, but several unrelated conspiracies by small groups of powerful people to control or influence countries, regions and economies. And the hero that combats them. That is essentially what the book is about, for pretty close to 700 pages.

Now where have I come across this plot line before? Pretty much everywhere. It's been done to death, and it had been done to death by 1987, when this book was written.

Anyway, I suspended disbelief for awhile and read the book. That's about all I can say about it.

There once was a gal from Nantucket.

2011-12-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

I decided to break all the rules and write a clean "Nantucket" limerick. Not sure why, but here goes. And I feel the need to apologize in advance.

There once was a gal from Nantucket,

Who put all she had in a bucket.

She'd tote it around,

All over town,

Until she decided to chuck it.

That's all.

The Chigger Fighter: A dream

2011-12-07T20:26:00.001-05:00

From an NIH website:   Chiggers are tiny, six-legged wingless organisms (larvae) that grow up to become a type of mite. Chiggers are found in tall grass and weeds. Their bite causes severe itching.

I provided the definition because I don't know if chiggers exist in the great white north, I don't know if people in colder areas are familiar with them. I've lived in the northern reaches of the USA and in Europe and I don't remember chiggers. It could be that they don't survive places that have winters cold enough to kill off the bugs.  Or it could be that I was a little older and tended to wear shoes.   When I was a young child in Kentucky I spent a lot of time not wearing shoes, and I was very familiar with chiggers. They're little critters you can't even see - and by the time you realize you've run into them, it's way too late. Nothing dangerous, but uncomfortable.

Anyway there was a person who was a free lance chigger fighter. He waged war on them, but because of state regulations he was not allowed to kill them or cause them harm, at least not on purpose.  He had to have a chigger fighting license, attend a bi-annual week long chigger warfare refresher course, and provide a safe place place for the chiggers he captured.   He was subject to occasional inspections, and made the chiggers available for scientific study upon request. The state government paid him a modest stipend for these services.

He had constructed a chigger friendly habitat in a small room in a corner of his house. He didn't know how many chiggers he had, but he could pick up their habitat with one hand, put it on some scales and see that it was slowly gaining weight, even accounting for the ones the state removed. He scale was sensitive, to 1/100th of an ounce, and he often wished he could afford one that measured to 1/1000th of an ounce, but he couldn't justify the expense.

He lived in a small house out in the country, close to the road on a very sharp curve.  The curve was at least 200 years old, and the reason why there had to be such an unusually sharp curve at that exact point had long been lost to history, especially after the courthouse where all the county records were kept burned down some 80 years earlier.   The locals new all about this curve and generally slowed down. But every now and then someone would come along who didn't know the road, would ignore the signs or for some reason would take the curve too fast. He had years of ruts in his yard from dozens of cars whose drivers failed to negotiate that curve in varying degrees of disaster. Usually the cars didn't stop.

One evening - the classic dark and stormy night - a driver was driving much too fast, missed the curve completely and crashed through the wall of his chigger prison. The collision smashed his chigger habitat. There was nothing to be done - undoubtedly some chiggers were killed, but undoubtedly some, perhaps millions upon millions, had been set free - released into the environment, including his house.

The next few days were spent dealing with his home owners insurance, being interviewed by state chigger control officers, filling out the state required "Incident of Chigger Death" forms, and obtaining prescription antihistamines to deal with the itching. Weeks after his house was repaired & his chigger habitat had been recreated, after having been denied permission to fumigate his house because the chiggers were deemed too valuable for research, he visited a neighbor, someone he knew would do a little bit of black market fumigation for a price. He hated to, felt guilty in fact, but gracious those little buggers could bite and they reproduced quite nicely in a nice warm house with lots of nooks and crannies to hide in, faster than he could capture them.

He suffered through a mild depression for weeks because of everything that happened after that car crashed into his house, and because of the incessant itching.

After the illegal fumigation he redoubled his chigger warfare efforts, so that at the inspectors would not be suspicious the next time they came around. Also he got the county to install a guard rail on that curve, and the county managed to get it funded through a state chigger warfare subsidy grant. Things returned to normal, and he continued his struggle against the chiggers.

He lived a long life, and after his death a resolution initiated by his state representative was passed in his honor, a medal honoring his years of chigger fighting was issued posthumously, his next of kin (a nephew who lived across the country and hadn't seen him in years) received a plaque and the state flag which flew over the state capitol building on the day the resolution was passed.

Eventide, Lake Wobegon & Holly Springs

2011-12-04T10:41:00.001-05:00

I don't really like to write up the books I've read, but I do because somewhere in the back of my mind I feel like it's a good exercise. However when I read them I never think about what I'm going to write about them. I read them as if I'm never going to think about them again once I'm done. Usually that's not the case. Usually I write something about them, then never think of them again.

Each one of these books deserve their own write up, but it's not going to happen this time. So, I'll mix them all together somehow.

Eventide by Kent Haruf, Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor, & Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon all have settings in small towns & the areas just outside of them, though the locations, culture & traditions of these small towns were quite different. Eventide is set in the Colorado plains, Lake Wobegon Days in Minnesota, & Holly Springs in northern Mississippi.

Holly Springs is the only one of them that is actually a real location. Lake Wobegon Days has some very funny parts, but it's much more than a humor book. If you pick up that book expecting a laugh on every page, you'll be disappointed. Also, it's humor is quite sophisticated. Eventide was probably the most "realistic" of the three. They are very different books, all worth a read.

The small towns (and I do mean small) are the common thread for all three books. They all capture an undercurrent of humanity that you will not see if you just notice the surface of things. Anybody who has lived in a small town any length of time knows that there is more going on than meets the eye.

Eventide is very good at capturing both the good and the horrors of a small town rural-ish area. There are people in this town who work hard and are fairly well off though not immune to the tragedies of life. This books gives you a pretty good description of modern life on a ranch, raising and selling cattle. And the horrors (my word) are because what the author describes is completely plausible & realistic. Elderly people just hanging on, people who are just down right mean, alcoholics, abused children & social workers who have to deal with this, the upheaval that can be brought on by what is probably a very treatable & essentially minor mental illness, people who, if they were ever tested, might be considered retarded and are fairly incapable of dealing with the problems of life. There is an undercurrent of dysfunction in which people still manage to function, at least at a certain level. I dont want to scare anyone off this book - it's pretty good. Much better than anything I'll ever write.

Lake Wobegon days creates a fictional town with fictional people from the days of it's founding as "New Albion" by Congregationalists from New England, to the arrival of Germans (who were Catholic) & finally the Norwegians, (who were Lutherans). The history of the town, and the railroad that came to it accidentally is very detailed, so be prepared for that. It was the Norwegians who became the majority and changed the town's name to Lake Wobegon, because they liked the sound of it. The author creates all kinds of characters in all kinds of situations, and it's interesting in a town dominated by the Lutheran church & the Catholic church (Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility), the narrator grows up as a member of the "Bretherns", a much more fundamentalist protestant sect, and a much smaller group, than the Lutherans. My favortie part of the book is a chapter long footnote entitled "95 theses 95" which a recent emigre from Lake Wobegon, back for a visit, was going to nail 95 theses to the door of the Lutheran church. He didn't because he could hear the Luther Leaguers inside and he was afraid someone would see him, and he was also afraid the nail might ruin a really good piece of wood. So he slipped it under the door of the local newspaper office, where years later it remains on the editor's desk, even though it was never printed. The editor is waiting for a slow news week, apparently. The 95 theses were a "dramatic complaint about his upbrining", and details the engraining of a very inhibiting value system. There is a lot of humor in the book, and it is used very well to capture that dysfunctional undercurrent of humanity that exists in every small town quite nicely. I don't know if that is what the author was trying to do or not.

Home to Holly Springs is Jan Karon's first book in her "Father Tim" series. Father Tim is an episcopalian priest and was the main character of her "Mitford" series of books, set in a small town in the mountains of North Carolina. People believe it's loosely based on the mountain resort town of Blowing Rock, but I don't know. However in this book Father Tim is returning to Holly Springs, Mississippi his boyhood home, & pretty much confronting his past. Father Tim came from a fairly well-to-do family, and grew up in a large home outside of town, living in what was almost a World War II era version of plantation society. The undercurrents that seem to be a common thread of these books come largely through Father Tim's flashbacks to his childhood. The innocence of childhood and of small town life is illusory much of the time. (Always has been) Things happen which the child is only semi-aware and which are never completely explained. Life is both good and safe, dangerous and tenuous. There are brutal people in the world. Even when Father Tim is in the present, the undercurrent is there. Most people he meets are nice enough, but some are living in difficult situations, some are gravely ill.

I've not done any of these books justice. They're all worth reading.

Our eBay Month - Nov 2011

2011-12-01T20:19:00.001-05:00

November was a very good eBay month for us, our best this year by far.

Our postcard sales were better than average, and our photo sales (cabinet, cdv, snapshots, other antique photos) went through the roof. We sold more photos this month than we have sold in any other month, by far. We sold them in unheard of amounts, at least for us. It was as if people suddenly discovered we sell photos. I'm not sure why this was, maybe it was the holiday period, though none of the photos had a holiday theme. Maybe it was domestic free shipping, but we've had that for a long time now. So, we don't really know why sales spiked, which means there's nothing we can really reproduce to ensure continued sales. So we'll do what we always do: list nice photos and describe them accurately, price them reasonably, give free shipping to domestic USA address, package them up securely and get them mailed within one business day, and provide best customer service we can.

November 2011 was the best month for us since December 2010, and even there, there is a caveat. The only reason our gross in December 2010 was higher than last month was because of consignment sales. Consignment sales accounted for 1/3rd or our total gross that month, and over half of our consignment sales was due to a sale of a fairly expensive item on the last day of the year. Our net (which I see as our profit) for Dec 2010, was actually somewhat less than our net for November 2011.   You have to go back to July of 2009 to find a month where our net was higher than last month. November was a good month.

And much of the July 2009 sales came via very strong consignment sales that month - it's funny, I can still remember what we were selling then. Even though "Consignment" is still part of our store name, we don't really do consignment any more.

When sales go up, fees & expenses go up. eBay charges a fee to list, a fee if an item sells, and a store subscription fee. PayPal charges a fee when money is deposited into your account. Fees get pricey.   Business expenses, especially postage, were quite high in November. But I take the view that if the fees and expenses have increased, that means the sales have increased. And the higher the sales, the over all less of a percentage expenses are. This, by the way, is one reason large business can make a huge amount of money while small business struggle. Just a little social commentary.

Our gross (and net) for Nov 2011 was almost twice as much as Nov 2010.   Interesting.

Nov 2011 was a month of extremes. On November 23rd, the day before Thanksgiving, we had nothing to ship. We were skunked - for the first time since sometime in 2009 we went a day without receiving any payments. In the days that followed though, we set and then promptly broke a record (for us) for the amount of items shipped out in a single day.

I've noticed we're getting quite a bit of repeat business - customers who buy things then return later and buy more. In fact the repeat business has driven a lot of our sales, it's a good thing to have.

It's very hard to predict what sales will be. October & November were very good months, July and August were terrible. Back in 2008 there was a month when we actually lost money. I have no idea how December will turn out, though right now it's looking pretty good. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Wordless Wednesday 11-30-2011

2011-11-30T20:10:00.001-05:00

Wordless Wednesday 11-23-2011

2011-11-23T18:35:00.001-05:00

History (mildly revised)

2011-11-21T21:18:00.001-05:00

I think a lot about history. Well, sometimes I think a lot about history.   I studied history in college - got a bachelors degree, did most of the work toward a masters degree, but ran out of money & motivation (I think motivation was the balance of the issue), joined the Army learned strange things and went to strange places and the rest, as they say is, uh, history. But that's not the kind of history I was thinking about.

A couple of things I know about history is that you frequently know more about an event the farther away in time you are from that event, and you have to know your sources.   History is written by the victors, so the story goes, but that isn't always true.

Take William Rufus, for example. Good old King William II of England, 3rd son and successor to William the Conqueror, King from 1087 to 1100. In high school world history classes William Rufus merited maybe a sentence or two, I can't really remember. In college survey courses he might get a paragraph.   He's one of those characters who if you really want to get to know, you have to put some effort into finding out about it. There is information out there, but he is not prominent amongst the post Anglo-Saxon kings and queens of England.

William died in 1100 as a result of a hunting accident. He was with several members of the nobility at the time (who else would he be with), including his brother Henry, and the scuttlebutt was that he was murdered. But that's just conjecture. It's quite possible that some near sighted member of his party mistook a rather broad man with long flowing hair and a full beard sitting astride a large horse for a deer and let fly an arrow in his general direction.  There were no corrective lenses in the 11th century, not even for nobility or royalty, so it's possible, I don't know. It could be that he just conked his head on a low lying limb. But what I do know is he died while hunting, and when the members of his party realized he was dead, they scattered. Not out of fear, but because they knew there was going to be upheaval and they needed to get control of their property and lands before anyone found out. Henry - the good King's brother - made a beeline for London and managed to get himself crowned King, even though I don't think he had the strongest claim. But he was there, so he was able to do it.

Anyway, anything you read will tell you William Rufus was a brutal ruler & his subjects were happy to see him go. It's in all the history books. Sometimes you have to accept things, after all there just isn't enough time to question everything that comes along, so this was one of the things I just accepted as part of my education - that William Rufus was a brutal ruler.

But now I have some time to think about it, and I wonder how do all the history books know this? Where did they get their information? Well I think they got a large part of their information from the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, a series of documents started long before William Rufus and continued long after. They were written by priest type people (they were pretty much the only people who could read and write at the time), and they did not like William Rufus one bit.   They had lots of reason to not like him - they had a vested interest in making him look bad.

The early Norman Kings of England could have cared less about Anglo-Saxon language and culture. They caused a pretty massive upheaval amongst the higher echelons of Anglo-Saxon society, but pretty much ignored the lower classes, especially the language. They just didn't care. They didn't speak English and didn't bother to learn it, didn't out law or direct how it developed in any way. The Norman kings generally had large holdings in what is now France, and much of their efforts and energies were directed towards that. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were like an underground subversive newspaper being written right out in the open, and the Kings either didn't know or didn't care (or both). Who the heck was going to read it anyway? This went on for a long time, and I believe this is the main source for William Rufus being seen as such a brutal person.

My suspicion is he was pretty brutal. It was the 11th century, and I don't think he was among the "enlightened". This is no Edward the Confessor we're talking about. But there's a good chance that he was no more brutal than any other King of his era.

Anyway, a part of learning stuff, of thinking critically is questioning the sources.  You have to ask where the money is coming from, so to speak. So when you read something, or see something on TV, even if you agree with it, it pays to ask what the motivation is.

Frequently things boil down to money, and there is a good chance the Chronicler's, when you pulled away all the layers, were no different. These were church people for the most part, and I bet anything William Rufus (and his father) confiscated church lands for this or that, and in the 11th century, especially, land was money.

At any rate, the history of William Rufus was written largely by the vanquished.

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-18T20:37:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving (in the USA) is November 24th this year, and I don't really have any thoughts about it. Maybe that's because I'm a man, or maybe I'm just empty of thoughts. But I have no real thoughts about it, so I thought dig around in my brain and see what I could find.

When I was a young child in eastern Kentucky, Turkey was not part of our Thanksgiving tradition. I'm not sure why that is, but I'll put forth a hypothesis and maybe it will fly.

My thinking goes like this. My grandparents, all four of them, were 19th century people. They were raised by people firmly rooted in the 19th century, and those traditions and values were passed on to them. Land and farming were very important to them. They grew their own food - not only tons of vegetables, but fruit too (especially apples) and they also raised cattle and pigs. Big pigs. And sometimes rabbits. There was always a mule about, and it's basic function was for plowing. Grandpa plowed behind a mule, just like people had done in the "old timey" days.

They weren't completely self-sufficient, they'd buy flour, sugar, coffee, stuff like that. But virtually everything else, they grew or raised. It was very hard work - I don't think I ever appreciated how hard they worked. I remember Grandma saying they worked "like dogs" and they kept at it until they hit their early 80s and just could not do it anymore.

I don't remember either set of my grandparents raising or hunting Turkeys. I'm not sure there were any Turkeys around to hunt anyway. I don't know what they raised before my time, fowl wise, but I never remember them raising any winged creatures other than yard birds - sometimes referred to as chickens.

They did, however, raise hogs. And hogs were slaughtered & butchered when it was cold, and I recollect that the main dish at my earlier Thanksgivings was ham - so I have a feeling I was eating one of my grandparent's pigs. It may have been one from the previous season, they had a smoke house & electricity so they could store stuff for long periods. I don't know. I just know that Turkey was not part of the Thanksgiving meal. To this day Turkey is not something I really look forward to.

I've seen the Norman Rockwell paintings so I know Turkey had be firmly established as a traditional Thanksgiving food by the time I sprouted forth. But it wasn't traditional for my family, and I suspect it wasn't for almost everybody around there at that time. It was different back then.

I suppose this counts as a Thanksgiving thought.

Saturday Thoughts Nov 5, 2011

2011-11-05T21:54:00.000-04:00

Time once again for some thoughts. Don't really have any, but here goes.

This is North Carolina, it should be 70 degrees or so right about now, but it's not. That bugs me, I like warm.

We go back to standard time very early tomorrow morning. I'm not going to worry about it. Daggone people messin' around with time, like they're some sort of Einstein wannabe or something.

I dont think time really exists anyway. Clocks and calendars measure days and hours, but days and hours are not time. Days and hours are measurements of the passage of something we call time, but really isn't time.

Gravity does exist, however, and it freaks me out. So strong, yet so weak. How can it hold the moon and not crush me?

I don't even have an inkling of an understanding of the universe.

I dont even understand why, no matter where you are on planet earth, the ground appears to be below your feet and the sky appears to be above your head.

I have found that the most interesting things are frequently the things that didn't seem interesting at all at first glance.

Thru the medium of television, I've discovered that we could easily afford a home in a backwater village in southern Italy (especially if we could live without heat). Bergen, Norway is a completely different story. I don't think we could buy a place there, at least not without some sort of job. And you'd surely need heat, though maybe not a/c., not sure.

In Minnesota, there's a joke about a Norweigan (Or Swede, take your pick) who loved his wife so much he almost told her.

Pickles the Dog thinks that she is a good dog. She also thinks that she is a pretty dog. Righ now she is where she always is this time of night - zonked out on the couch. She barks if she hears something unusual, so that's worth the price of dog food.

I don't like shaving.

I love rhubarb pie. No strawberries please. Putting strawberries in rhubarb pie is like putting coconut in banana pudding. Don't need it. Even more importantly, don't want it.

Fine grit sandpaper is a phrase I could live without.

This is about all the time (rather what we call time) I have to think of things this evening.

Wordless Wednesday 11-2-2011

2011-11-02T15:08:00.004-04:00

Our eBay Month - Oct 2011

2011-11-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

October was our best month this year.

In looking at the sales & things I keep track of, in one way it seems like a broken record. Most of our sales are either postcards or various forms of antique photographs, and so much of what determines whether we have a good month or not depends on the photograph sales. The same was true for October.

Our sales of single postcards - which I still consider the core part of our business - was a little higher than average, and the price we got per card was a little higher than average. It was a good solid postcard sales month & I'm quite happy with it, but we've had months this year where we've sold more.

Our sales of photographs is another story - they were by far the highest sales of year. Actually the highest sales ever (except for June, but that was a special case, so I don't want to count it). Also, for the first time since we've been selling photographs, they generated more money for the month than the postcard sales - and we had a good postcard sales month. (Again, except for June) Our photos are the same types of photo's we've always had. (Once again, except for June). Its as if people suddenly discovered that we sell them. I really don't know why so many sold this month.

We offer free shipping domestically, maybe that played a role. eBay increased the title size to 80 characters, perhaps that helped. I really don't know for sure.

June was a special case, photo wise, where a few unique photos did very well for us. In October, it was volume, photo grunt work so to speak, the most individual photos we've sold in a month, ever. In October we sold our typical photos, and there is no reason why we can't repeat that. We may not, but it's entirely possible. In June, we had a few unique photos and that will be very hard for us to replicate. June was a little bit of luck, but luck had nothing to do with October.

I pay attention to photos - I know what makes an antique photo unique and collectible. They are actually hard to get hold of for a reasonable price (unique items being unique and all).   I also know that people collect photographs for reasons other than absolute uniqueness, and I'm doing my best to get a share of those people. At the same time I keep my eye out for something really interesting or unusual.

It's like a car dealership that sell Mercedese and Chevys. The Mercedese are much more expsenive, but they'll make more money over all on the Chevy sales. I won't get into maintenance, because there the analogy may break down.

There is nothing special about the month of October. October 2010 was a poor month for us, sales wise. You'd have to go back 18 months or so to find a month where we did better than last month.

Another first for October 2011 - we actually sold more than we listed, so the inventory in our eBay store has gone down a bit.

eBay fees are high. Of course the more you list & sell the more fees you pay. There are also PayPal fees, which aren't as high, but are high enough. Postage is also a major expense - generally our second highest expense of the month.

Even with the increased expenses it was a good month.   November seems to be starting off well so we'll see if it keeps up.

Men In Hats Bat Hunting Recruitment Song

2011-10-25T20:36:00.000-04:00

We're men! We're men in hats!

We crawl around in caves looking for bats!

We're Men! We're men in hats!

We need help finding some flying rats!

We're a bunch of happy spe-lunk-ers,

In caves from Or-e-gon to Yon-kers!

We're Men! We're men in hats!

Won't you help us find some bats!

Valdese Town Council Elections

2011-10-22T21:33:00.000-04:00

It appears that town council elections for Valdese, NC are imminent.   I'm not sure who all's running, but I've seen signs. Literally.

There's Frances Hildebran, with a blue and white sign that just says vote for Frances Hildebran. There's Steve Ogle, with the same kind of sign except it's red and white. There's Jason Banner whose sign I think is red, white & blue, and asks you to vote for him "For A Better Valdese".   And then I've seen Sandi Walker's sign, which asks you to vote for her for "Common Sense Government". Her sign is also yellow with black lettering, thus setting her apart from rest of the field in the graphics regard.

Frances & Steve have pretty basic signs, just getting their name out there, letting you know they're running, nothing else. Old school - they probably have the same thing printed up on those funeral home fans so that people who are grieving for their loved ones can think about who to vote for in a couple of weeks.

Jason and Sandi, however, had made campaign promises on their signs. Really general, unmeasurable, impossible to verify campaign promises, but nontheless they've stuck their neck out.

Jason has promised a better Valdese. My first thought is, better than what? Better than right now I suppose, but how much better? What does better mean? Is he going to get all the mills & factories in town churning out furniture and hosiery products and employing hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people like they were 50 to 60 years ago? Or is he just talking about adding a traffic light where Faet meets Main Street so people can make a left turn without risking their lives. Or is he just going to get all the traffic lights on Main Street better synchronised? Or is he going to round up all the non-English speaking people in town and make them prove they're citizens. I have no idea what his idea of a better Valdese is, but most likely, somone else has a different idea of what a better Valdese is.

Sandi has promised common sense government. Of course I immediately wonder which common sense, because there seems to be more than one. So much of what a person considers common sense depends on the values instilled in them when they were growing up. I have common sense about some things, so imagine a large circle that represents my common sense. Now imagine another circle representing someone elses common sense.   There are parts of the circles that will surely overlap.   If it's cold outside, you should dress warmly. I believe that's common sense to most people & that would be in the overlapping parts of the circles.    To some people, especially those with lots of money, it's common sense that if a community needs more jobs you should lower taxes on it's wealthiest citizens. To others that makes no sense at all and that may not be in the overlapping parts of the circles. I'm positive Sandi Walker has common sense, but is it the type of common sense that prays the gay away, or is it the type of common sense that says that now is perhaps not the best time to start life over as a real estate agent. I have no idea.

Jason & Sandi probably assumed they were putting some bland, safe slogan on their signs, something that sounds agreeable and people would hopefully associate with their names and not really think about.   Neither considered that Pickles the Dog and I walk the mean streets of Valdese every morning, generally south of Main Street, and I see those signs.   I see them, I look closely, trying to catch the nuances of a printed two dimensional piece of small town political advertising, I wonder about them, I read between the lines, I try to figure out what they're really saying, especially if there are any "code" words in them. Jason and Sandi's signs kind of scare me, I have no idea what their slogans mean to them, and I can easily see the sinister side of "A Better Valdese" and especially of "Common Sense Government".   Frances and Steve have no slogans, make no promises, could be they're just really need a job, and for no particular reason I feel a little easier about them.

Doesn't matter. I've never met Frances, Steve, Jason or Sandi, and probably never will. I don't know anything about them or what they stand for, which is why I pay attention to the signs. And we don't live within the Valdese town limits, so I don't reckon I'll be a-votin' for them any how.

Wordless Wednesday 10-19-2011

2011-10-19T16:55:00.003-04:00

Friday Night Thoughts

2011-10-14T21:51:00.001-04:00

That time again, writing something just to write something.

As in most other places in the world, it is October in North Carolina, and if the wind is blowing and you're in the shade, it almost feels crisp. Otherwise it's just as humid as it was in August, just not as hot.

I am convinced that dogs see things that don't exist, then get scared and bark at them.

Cats also see things that don't exist, however they don't get scared, they just stare. Nature of the beast.

I still like twitter better than facebook, it seems more anonymous, even though it isn't.

Here is a short list (out of a much longer list) of foods I don't like: butter, mayonnaise, cheese, yogurt, tomatoes, steak, peas, peaches, pears, artichokes, cauliflower, mustard, onions.

Not sure what the difference between x-factor and the voice is, but I could live without either of them.

I thought I'd make a joke about Herman Cain's 999 plan just being 666 upside down, but when Michelle Bachmann made the same joke, I was glad I didn't. Now I'm sorry I even thought about it.

Last night I had a dream, I woke up & tried to remember it, but it just dissolved. I could see it dissolving and there was nothing I could do. I couldn't remember anything, and I tried hard.

I can talk myself out of mowing grass without any problem at all. I did it today - it needed another day to dry out. That's the ticket.

Even though I was in the Army at the time and that put a bit of a damper on things, I really liked living in Monterey, California.

As much as I disparage Kafka, I really liked the unfinished story about Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor. How on earth could anybody think of something like that? Where does that come from?

Wordless Wednesday 10-12-2011

2011-10-12T21:38:00.000-04:00

Shoveling out the Driveway

2011-10-08T19:54:00.000-04:00

Topographically speaking, Valdese, North Carolina is not a flat place. If there is a flat place in Valdese, it was made that way with heavy equipment. Valdese is very close to some good sized mountains, and has some very nice views in spots, but it's actually located in the foothills region of North Carolina. You can tell this because 25 % of the businesses around here (80% of which are thrift stores or beauty parlors) call themselves Foothills something or other. This is not to be confused with Piedmont, which I believe is French for Foothills, but is an entirely different region, somewhat to the east of us. Anyway, Valdese is a pretty little town with an interesting history and some interesting buildings, and could almost be a tourist destination if the universe had aligned itself just a tad differently. All that aside though, it's not a flat place.

Our property is roughly rectangular, almost 3 acres, sloping almost but not quite gently from the gravel road we live on to a creek, then banks sharply up toward some houses in a relatively new development. That area is completely wooded and in the summer we can't see those houses.    We have huge trees and lots of elbow room and it's nice. But it's not flat.

The gravel road we live on comes off a paved residential road, travels downhill toward our property then curves. Our paved driveway comes off of that curve, continues down hill on the west side of the house then curves around behind the house. The driveway area behind the house is about as flat as things get around here and it was made that way at some unknown time in the past, almost certainly with heavy equipment.

The problem is, it doesn't drain. So when it rains water streams from the paved residential street, down our gravel street, down our driveway, and ends up in the area of the drive way behind our house. It brings along with it a lot of dirt and other residue it picks up along the way, and in very short order that area of the driveway is caked with mud. It dries out & turns into dirt, and the driveway disappears.

Now there are drainage ditches, but they're apparently just a good intention. They've never worked, and I'm sure are only there because some permit issuing authority from the local government required them to be there so they could collect their permit issuing fee.

When we bought the place there was no indication of any kind of issue with the small part of the driveway that is behind our house. Of course I'm pretty sure there was a drought when we bought this place. I shoveled the driveway out once several months ago. I started to it out again today, but decided it doesn't really matter.   Shoveling dirt from a driveway by hand is hard work, even on a low humidity day.

With the new septic system & grading done in the back yard, maybe it will drain. But I bet it won't.

Wordless Wednesday 10-05-2011

2011-10-05T19:51:00.000-04:00

Our eBay Month - September 2011

2011-10-02T11:51:00.000-04:00

September finally broke our 2011 sales pattern, where (with the exception of June, and maybe August, but not by much), every month was not quite as good as the month before. September exceeded August, both in Gross & Net. To a person like me, who really knows nothing about the finer points of business, the most important number is the net - what is left over after expenses. In September our expenses were higher than in August, so as a result even though we grossed quite a bit more in September than August, our net was just barely higher. But still, it counts.

September was also the end of the 3rd quarter of 2011, which can lead to a lot of comparisons. 3rd quarter of 2010 was much better, 3rd quarter of 2009 was about the same, both in gross and net. However, up to this point in 2011, we're doing quite a bit better for the year than we did in 2010, and are about even for the year with 2009.

In 2009 we were still doing a fair amount of consignment sales. We did a lot more before that, and while it's profitable, there's a lot more work involved record keeping wise and especially dealing with people. People, as you know, can sometimes be difficult. If I wanted difficulties I could have a REAL job, sitting in a cube sweating drops of blood & jumping thru hoops to meet deadlines and such. So we decided we didn't want to do consignment anymore & by 2010 we were pretty much out of it. As a result our sales dipped mightily for the year. Well I think we've finally recovered and compensated for the lack of consignment, and in 2011 we're back on a 2009 pace.

September started out pretty slow, but it began to pick up during the 2nd week - maybe because school started, who knows. As usual, what seems to determine if we have a good month or not are our photo sales - and photo sales were better than usual for the month. Postcard & trade card sales were about average for us.

We had a jump in international sales also. We sold more internationally in September than any month this year since January, and that was very welcome. October has started with an international sale (a trade card to Malta) so hopefully it will continue.

July was an absolutely dismal month sales wise, we've had two pretty good months since then, and we'll just have to see how it goes. This eBay stuff seems to be boom or bust for us with not much middle ground. All I know to do is keep plugging away at it. It's the optimist in me I suppose.

Friday Evening Thoughts - because it's all I can think of

2011-09-16T21:03:00.000-04:00

I'm surprised at how much I don't know.

I created about 1000 credit card sized, laminated, edited cliff note versions of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in case I run into anybody in Valdese who needs to know what an actual Nazi is. Not really.

A few minutes ago I used a pair of scissors to pry apart some chocolate cookies that had melted together. It was not a good decision, and please don't tell my wife.

I find I'm cynical sometimes, but I'm not cynical enough to be a political cartoonist. Also, I can't really draw.

Whenever there's a movie about a dog, somebody's going to die.

Whenever there's a movie about Christmas, somebody's going to die.

I suppose I'd rather watch Bachelor Pad than be water boarded, but I'd have to think about it. No I don't. Somebody call Dick Cheney and let's get it over with.

I believe the worst day of summer was Sept 2nd or 3rd - it was hot & humid, then there was an afternoon thundershower, and then it got hotter and more humid. I'm thinking about that now, because it's 45-50 degrees cooler, and I'm pretty sure I don't like it.

If I had 1.9 million dollars in cash to spend, I could think of a lot of things to do with it other than buying a house in Costa Rica.

When I read over some of my older posts, I cringe. I suppose one day I'll read this and cringe.

I Think I Remember Mrs. Apple

2011-09-03T21:07:00.001-04:00

I may have my facts wrong, right down to people's names, but I think I remember Mrs. Apple.

One day Mrs. Apple was driving her jalopy down the road, her jalopy being defined as something on the order of a Model T, and of course it broke down. But she wasn't worried, she lived in a nice friendly place and she knew it was only a matter of time before some nice young man would stop and help her. So she sat down on a small retaining wall in the front of someone's house and ate an apple and waited. People stopped, but no one could figure out what was wrong with her car, so she just told them thanks and they went on, confident that eventually someone would be able to figure it out. Well eventually Mr. Brown, a nice young man who drove a delivery truck & wore some kind of uniform, stopped and looked, and he's the one who figured out that Mrs. Apple had run out of gas. They both laughed and he gave her some gas and they went on their way.

In my life, especially when I first started owning cars, I've had a few occasions where my automobile has decided to strand me on the road somewhere usually due to its advanced age and a lack of money to keep up a proper maintenance routine. Each time that happened I always thought about Mrs. Apple, and how things never seemed to work out for me like it did for her. And I wished, for a time at least, that I could have lived in Mrs. Apple's world, where everybody was nice, and everything always turned out fine.

Our eBay month - August 2011

2011-09-02T16:04:00.000-04:00

August was better than July, but the business is still following a trend that I would like to reverse.

How good or bad a month we have is determined by a few factors: the number of items we sell, the amount we're able to sell them for, our business expenses and eBay policies (which are closely entwined with our business expenses).

In August we actually sold somewhat fewer postcards and antique photos than we did in July, but we sold quite a bit more trade cards. Also, there is a quirk of the way I keep records. I update the totals on the days we ship - I somehow feel like it isn't legal unless it's paid for, packaged and on its way, and it helps me keep organized. We ship Monday thru Saturday, everyday the post office is open. July had a holiday, and because of the way the days fell there were 25 shipping days in July. In August, there were 27 shipping days. For monthly totals, it doesn't matter how many days there were, but it does matter for daily averages of sales and transactions, and I watch that closely.

Overall, we sold more items in July than August, but we got a better price for things in August, so our "gross" haul was slightly better than in July.

The important number though is not the gross, but the net, the amount we have left over after expenses. The net for August was significantly higher than July, and this happened for a couple of reasons. Our postcard & antique photo sales were down slightly, both in number and dollar amount, but we had a pretty good Victorian Trade Card month. In addition, our monthly business expenses were much lower than average.

I'm very interested in why business expenses were lower, and I some reasons I know, and others I have theories.

First, our direct eBay payment was noticeably lower. eBay charges listing fees whenever we list something for sale, and a final value fee if it actually sales. Until last month the FVF on most items we sold was 12%. Last month eBay lowered the FVF to 11%, but included shipping and handling charges in the FVF calculation, something they had not done before. For people who have a shipping and handling charge on their items, their expenses just went up. We don't charge shipping and handling on any items we ship to a domestic USA shipping address, so this change resulted in somewhat lower eBay fees for us.

Second, the amount we paid for postage was much less than what we paid in July. I print postage labels online when I can, and we purchase stamps in bulk (by the roll, etc) as needed. We just didn't purchase as much in August as we normally do.

The increase in the amount we netted for August was significant, and 80% of that came from reduced expenses, which does not really make me happy. Our daily sales average in August was less than in July, and the average transactions as well as the average number of items sold per day were also lower than July. This continues a trend that started in January - the daily averages for each month this year have been less than the month before (with the exception of June). I don't like this and I'm not sure what to do about it.

September has started fairly slowly. Sigh.

Hurricane Irene in Valdese

2011-08-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

In Valdese, Hurricane Irene consisted of some high thin clouds, sunshine, humidity and a warm breeze. We made no special preparations (other than mowing the grass - the same as I did for Hurricane Hanna a few years ago). I suppose we live far enough west that a gigantic storm going up the coast is not quite gigantic enough to cause us any inconvenience. I think for us to be bothered it would have to make landfall somewhere in South Carolina then head north west.

My only experience with hurricanes are the ones that passed by when I was living in Maryland, and there I was used to hours and hours of torrential rain - I'm sure Irene soaked most if not all of Maryland. I'm pretty sure rain from a hurricane going up the east coast is the most rain I've ever seen at one time in my life. But here, at the foot of some rather good sized mountains, that's not the case.

So for us, yesterday was just a warmish, humid day. Today it's a little cooler, not as much haze in the air & I got a good view of the mountains from the cemetery when I walked Pickles this morning.

In the eastern part of the state, a completely different story. What a difference a little distance makes.

Wordless Wednesday 8-24-2011

2011-08-24T20:31:00.000-04:00

A word about today's earthquake

2011-08-23T20:19:00.000-04:00

There was an earthquake today on the east coast, 5.8 or 5.9 depending on where you look. I didn't feel it, tho apparently plenty of people in the area did. However we now realize that about the time it hit, Pickles the Dog went totally bee-zerk. Can't be sure that the two events were related, but its possible.

Valley of Horses

2011-08-20T16:38:00.002-04:00

I had read Clan of the Cave Bear & thought it was interesting, so I decided to read Valley of Horses, the next in a series of "Earth's Children" books by Jean Auel. Being a red blooded American male of the species, I'd never heard of them before - we picked them both up in a box of books at a yard sale down on South Avenue in Valdese. I'm not sure how many more books there are in the series.

First I need to gripe about the titles. I naturally want to say Clan of the Cave Bears, which is wrong, and I also have a strong urge to say Valley of THE Horses, which is also wrong. I bet anything the author did this on purpose, just to screw people up and see who was paying attention. I can think of no other reason.

I liked Clan of the Cave Bear - it must have been interesting growing up Neanderthal. The author created a whole culture for them, I'm sure a mixture of accepted scientific belief with imagination used to fill in the holes.

The story continues with Valley of Horses, with Ayla forced to leave the clan by the extremely jealous, angry, and impulsive Broud, using every bit of skill she has just to survive. But the book introduces another major character, Jondalar, who is on a "Journey" with his brother to travel to the end of the Mother river - looks like the modern day Danube. (or Donau).

Slowly but surely it becomes clear that Jondalar is something of an Ice Age John Holmes, but much more handsome, and Valley of the Horses becomes, in addition to everything else it is, something akin to literary pornography geared towards women.

The characters are great, extremely vivid, detailed, very well described, very realistic and it is very easy to identify with them. Jean Auel is at least as good as someone such as Orson Scott Card ("Ender's Game" etc) when it comes to character development, maybe better. Most characters in most books can't come close to touching Ayla and Jondalar - it's beautifully written that way. My fear is I'm going to compare the characters in every book I read after this to the characters in this book, and I'm sure almost all will come up short, they'll seem somehow incomplete.

And it's not just humans - Whinney the horse and Baby the cave lion are also an important part of the story.

But the descriptions of sexual encounters involving Jondalar are overpowering, and I'm not sure that it always advances the story. Or maybe it does - it is certainly part of his (and Ayla's) being. But it's like the author gets lost in it, and it goes on and on forever with page after page of throbbing manhood and pulsating wetness and such. But you know how us males are, it could be that my main complaint was that there werent any pictures. Anyway, when I finished this book my overall impression was "Man, there's a lot of sex in this book". There's more than enough sex in this book to get a Republican up in arms, or to cause some parent somewhere to demand it be removed from the school libraries. Assuming it was ever there to begin with.

But the book is so much more. Its a great story with beautifully written characters, in a beautifully described location just trying to live their lives 30,000 years or so ago. You're not going to find many books as good as this.

Wordless Wednesday 8-17-2011

2011-08-17T20:20:00.000-04:00

Another Thoughts Post

2011-08-14T21:05:00.002-04:00

I've been a bit slow about about posting in this blog lately. Nothing burnin a hole in my mind I suppose, but if I'm going to keep it, I should post something once in awhile.

Pickles the Dog is coming up on her 4th birthday. We're not actually sure when she was born, but we knew roughly how old she was when we got her, so we just agreed on Sept 1 as a bithdate. No party is planned, she's a dog and she doesn't care.

Pickles is funny tho. If you wake her up, she immediately runs to a window and looks out, as if we've caught her goofing off on the job or something.

Pickles has to work for her treats. She has to sit, give me a paw, then lay down, then jump up form a prone position. The jump up doesn't count unless both rear paws leave the floor. She seems to love it.

Most of the country has been through a long and brutal heat wave this summer. In my little slice of North Carolina, it's been a pretty normal summer, temperature wise. That means, it's been pretty brutal until fairly recently, with enough heat and humidity to drown a mule.

I do not listen music enough.

Saturday I finally conquered the weed eater. I seem to have trouble with machinery. Its strange, because I've held jobs in the past that required a very complex and/or abstract level of thinking, but please dont ask me to start anything by pulling a chord, or do anything that requires mechanical precision. It will not end well. But Saturday was a breakthrough - I successfully installed a new spindle of string. Just like a big boy.

It would be nice to get paid for reading - as long as it's not Kafka.

I learned today that State Highway 80 in Kentucky is the state's longest highway, stretching from Pikeville in the east to Paducah in the west. That's a long ways. There's a new highway 80 running through Knott County now, but when I was young it was Hindman's Main Street, and a two lane twisty curvy mountain road, by far the best road in the county. I never knew it went all the way from Pikeville to Paducah.

I finished reading Valley of Horses by Jean Auel, and all I can say is lawsy, that ol' Jondalar.

All for now.

Our eBay month - July 2011

2011-08-02T17:32:00.000-04:00

July was a pretty sad month eBay-wise.   It was by far the worst month of the year, and, with the exception of June, it continues a downward trend for the year. We've seen a monthly decrease in our average daily shipping amount (dollar wise) each successive month since January, again with the exception of June. Even so, July is the first month this year I'd consider to be a "bad" month.

June was a special case - we sold some pretty unique items at a pretty good price. Had we not sold those items, June would have continued the trend.

So, if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting the results to change, then perhaps I'm crazy & we need to totally revamp the business. Of course I think the definition of insanity has a lot more to do with disorganized thinking, auditory & visual hallucinations, paranoid delusions and stuff like that than it does with the way we run a fairly minuscule eBay business. But still. I wish I knew what's going on.

July 2010 was a very good month for us, so I don't buy the explanation that it's summer & people are doing summer stuff.   It was summer last year at this time.

The overall economy is not in great shape, but I also can't believe that our postcard and photo sales reflect anything going on with the financial or housing markets, or anything else having to do with the national economy. But I can't discount it either.

Our sales of single postcards were normal - both in quantity and price. They were right at what our average for the year is. Our sales of old photos and Victorian trade cards were less than normal, and our business expenses were somewhat higher than normal, but not extremely so.

I just checked our trade card sales for the year and I'm surprised at how much less than normal this month's was.   So I guess that was the issue. Lower than normal photo & trade card sales, higher than normal business expenses.

I track postage expenses separately from business expenses, and while they take out a chunk, they were actually a little lower than previous months. Lower sales, lower postage expenses. We offer free shipping on virtually items shipped domestically - perhaps that bit us a little this month.

But at any rate, January 2011 was a good month, and it's been going down hill ever since. With the exception of June. June aggravates me, because since it was a good month I have to keep writing "with the exception of June".   But, with the exception of June, sales keep getting worse & worse. So I gotta think of something.

I do know something though. Good inventory sells. Even in the summer, even in a bad economy, even in a bad economy in the summer, even on eBay. "The exception of June" kind of proves that point. The trick is getting good inventory.

This is what happened today.

2011-07-28T21:59:00.003-04:00

Today some local police asked me to show some identification as I was getting ready to leave the post office. Interesting.

Patti, Pickles the Dog and I piled into the truck and took our daily eBay mailings down to the post office. It's a daily tradition - almost every day at some point in the afternoon you'll see us there. Typically, while the weather is warm, Patti goes into the post office mails the packages, picks up things and goes to the counter if needed. Today was stamp buying day, so that made a trip to the counter necessary, and some times that can take several minutes, depending on how many people are ahead of you who wish to chat.

Pickles and I walk across the street and sit in a shady area on a small concrete wall near the Waldensian Museum.

This happens day after day.

Today a few minutes after Pickles and I had settled in, a white Jeep approached us. As it got near I saw it was an unmarked police vehicle - there were 2 people in it, one in uniform and one in plain clothes.   It passed me up then made a U-turn and parked near end of the post office parking area across the street. I saw this out of the corner of my eye, didn't think much of it and went on thinking about whatever I was randomly thinking about. Pickles was busy smelling the grass around her.

A couple of minutes later they left and drove down St. Germain, but then stopped, two or 3 houses down. That I found interesting.   I did look at them, but why wouldn't I, it was odd. They were there for a minute or so, then Patti came out & Pickles an I got off the wall and walked toward our truck.   The police car made a U-Turn on St. Germain, then parked across the street from me. I was actually in the truck & starting it up when they approached and asked to see some identification. Pickles started barking at that point, but wasn't as bad as she could have been. Pore ol' dog doesnt know any better. I was very polite.

So I gave them my drivers license. The one in uniform asked what I was doing in the area, so I told him. The other looked in the back of the truck (there's not anything there) then ran my name and license plates, asked me if the address was valid and all that. Everything checked out so they gave me my drivers license back, said thank you & told me to have a good day.

After that we drove over to the Family Dollar, one of Valdese's premier retail establishments, then headed home.

They never told me why they were checking me out, and I never asked. I figured as long as they didn't ask me to step out of the truck or start putting me in cuffs I wouldn't worry about it. I dont know if I fit a description, or if the truck did, or if for some reason I just looked suspicious to them. It is possible I looked a tad unkempt to the casual observer. I suppose I need a hair cut, could use a shave, and certainly was not dressed in my Sunday best. And technically I suppose I was loitering, sitting there waiting for Patti to come out of the post office. I probably looked out of place.

I suspect they searched the area where I was sitting after I left, but I can't prove it.

I've lived in enough small towns to know there is a strong undercurrent of lawlessness about, and Valdese is no different. There are a lot of people who live on the very edge, people who bend or outright break rules of society, people who mostly are never noticed by the church going white people with enough money and a comfortable place to live.   There are drug abusers, thieves, alcoholics, abusers of wives, husbands & children, sex offenders, convicted felons, shop lifters, robbers, the occasional murderer, violent, unsavory, undesirable people living in Valdese and the immediate area. They don't make up the majority of the community by any means, not even close, but they are present, and most likely only the police have a good idea of just how present they are. Most people ignore it, arent affected by it, out of sight, out of mind.

I've had a lot of experiences in my life, I've lived in a lot of small towns and I am very aware of this seething undercurrent of dregs in polite society. These days I mostly sequester myself from it. I don't want anything to do with it. So I can go for a long period of time with no reminders of it's existence. But all I have to do is pay attention to realize it's right there. All anyone has to do is look.

There are a lot of people in Valdese & in Burke County North Carolina living right on the edge. It is not a wealthy place.

I don't know why these policemen decided they needed to talk to me. Maybe some tall guy with brown hair lugging around a goofy half hound half retriever robbed a convenience store. I doubt it. Most likely they were looking for someone, or perhaps I just looked out of place. Either way, I can understand.

UPDATE - Aug 2, 2011:

I found out today that someone robbed the BB&T bank on Main Street about 10 minutes before we loped into the post office. No one hurt, apparently no weapons involved (at least none anyone could see), but that explains the unusual behavoir of the local constabulary.

Tuesday Thoughts

2011-07-19T20:19:00.001-04:00

This must be the era of strange dreams for me, I seem to have them every night.

I took my pickup truck in for its North Carolina state inspection today. There were several other people in the small waiting room chatting with each other. As I listened I thought this could easily be Kentucky. Had I been in the same situation in South Dakota, I probably would not have thought that.

Yesterday Ricky Skaggs, John Glenn, Nelson Mandela & I had a birthday (along with about 1 in every 365 people or so on the planet). I wonder if any of them thought about me, 'cause I thought about them.

If you happen to read this, your life is just that much different that it would have been had you not read it.

When you're driving and you see other people in other cars, do you ever wonder what their lives are like?

In the same vein, if you go to a restaurant with someone, do you ever wonder how different your perception and experience would be if you had sat where the other one was seated? In fact it could change the perceptions and experiences of every person in the place. Maybe just a little, maybe a whole lot. Who knows?

Pickles the Dog is goofy. No two ways about it.

Back when my life was spent in a cube, I was prepared to lead a worker's revolt against motivational speakers & writers. Now I don't care. Stephen Covey, you're safe. From me at least. Good luck to ya.

So ends my Tuesday thoughts.

Wordless Wednesday 7-13-2011

2011-07-13T21:07:00.000-04:00

On the Behavior of Dogs.......

2011-07-12T13:38:00.003-04:00

When we emerged for our daily dog walk, sometime before 9 AM this morning, we were greeted by overcast skies and a temperature of about 75 degrees. However, it was not the 75 degrees of late autumn, or, around here, of early winter. It was not a 75 degrees with clear, crisp skies, with a slight breeze that might add just a touch of a refreshing bite. This was 75 degrees with thick, heavy, humid air, much closer to today's low temperature than what will be today's high. I knew sweat would be rolling off me before we had travelled very far.

Today is also trash day. Pickles loves trash day, as long as we dont meet any big, loud trucks. On the walk, once we got off our property, she fell right into walking mode. I have her on a leash, but it hangs loose, and she walks along side of me with her head about at my knee. I was looking around, not really paying attention when I felt a tug on the leash. Pickles had stopped. Not only had she stopped but she was rubbing her shoulder and then her whole side into the pavement, in the remnants of some liquefied detritus from a garbage truck. It was only then that I noticed the smell - aided by the heaviness of the air it was overpowering to me. But to Pickles the Dog, it was heaven on earth. A sweet ambrosia. Eau de Garbazhe. I paid more attention as the walk continued.

As we approached the railroad tracks across Praley, I heard a dog bark. That's not unusual, there is a dog up on the corner of St. Germain who frequently barks, but this bark was coming from a slightly different direction - in the same general direction I was planning to walk. I always pay attention when I think their may be strange dogs about.

Pickles' behavior on a leash is different from her behavior off a leash. On the leash, we walk past barking dogs (either behind a fence or chained up) and she pays them no mind. She might look at them, but she doesnt bark at them or go crazy or try to get to them. She just trots nicely along, giving anyone who notices a misguided impression that she's a good dog. If we meet another dog walker, and they're on the other side of the road, same thing. The other dog might be going crazy, but Pickles doesnt even seem to notice. If a dog is loose and approaches, Pickles wants to play, but she's not too pushy about it.

Off the leash, it's another story. We don't routinely let her run loose, but she keeps a good look out in the house. If another dog, cat or person comes on our property, she goes ballistic. She can also get very excited if she's riding and we see another dog. Once when she was a puppy, she jumped out of the window of our truck, while it was moving (slowly, thank heavens) past a neighbor's dog. They stood there face to face about a foot a part and barked at each other.

So, why is she so docile on a leash, and so excitable when she's not on a leash? I've had this long standing "dog behind a fence" theory of behavior, which I also apply to humans. My theory is a dog tends to be more aggressive when there is no possibility of physically confronting the object of the aggression. Or conversely, when there is no possibility of the object of the aggression physically confronting the dog. Substitute human for dog, for a more general application of the theory. I don't know if this is true or not, I've done no studies, no dogs have filled out questionnaires. And obviously this would not apply to dogs who may be sociopaths or psychotic, just your normal goofy tail wagging bone chewing dog. But I think it's true.

Our eBay month - June 2011

2011-07-02T11:17:00.003-04:00

June was a very good month for us. It was also the end of the 2nd quarter, which causes a fanatical urge to compare quarters so I shall do so, briefly.

We know exactly why June was a very good month. In May we bought 10 cabinet cards of Native American Indians.  We paid a bit more than usual for a group of 10, but they looked very interesting. The person who sold them didn't know if they were original or reprints.

We couldn't tell for sure either - we do not consider ourselves experts or authorities, but we are gaining quite a bit of experience. We've sold hundreds of 19th century, early and mid-20th century photographs, so we know what they look like. There is a big difference between the looks of a snapshot from the 1940's, a gelatin silver photo from the early 20th century and a late 19th century albumen print. I'm talking about he physical characteristics of the photo, not the subject matter. We've gotten pretty good at estimating the age of a photo with a glance. The photos we received did not look like 20th century photos to us. We looked at them pretty closely too. We scanned them to see if we saw dots or lines, we looked at them under a magnifying glass. I made my peace with the world and stared at them. We saw nothing that would absolutely place these photos in the 20th century.

But still, we had no way to absolutely authenticate them, so we do what we always do when we think we have an original but aren't 100% positive or can't prove it: we took good pictures, and described it to death. And included our caveat that we weren't sure. We started these at a fairly low auction starting price - especially if these are originals.   And we weren't going to argue with anyone - if some one didn't like the photo or it wasn't what they thought we'd refund their money, no questions asked. After we received the item back, of course.

Every one sold, most sold for MUCH more than our asking price & we made a very good profit on them. This is the reason we had a very good June. If these were originals, even the ones who paid a lot of money for them got a bargain. The people who bought them seem to be happy - so far all our feedback for them has been positive, and we haven't received any low dsr marks.

Our sales of single postcards were down slightly, in fact they were the lowest this year, but not by much. All in all post card sales continue to remain steady. As usual it is the photo sales which seem to determine if we have a better than average month or not. In June, the photos sales were very good.

Our net for the 2nd quarter - after expenses and stuff - was about 9.5% higher than our net for the 1st quarter of this year. We are doing much better in 2011 than 2010. Our net for last month alone was almost as much as our total net for the whole 2nd quarter of 2010.   And our net for the 1st quarter of 2011 almost doubled our net for the 1st quarter of 2010.

I doubt July will repeat June, but you never know. You just keep plugging away at this stuff and sometimes good things happen.

On July 6th eBay is implementing "new lower rates" for sellers and they're also rolling out a shopping-cart. I've been with eBay long enough to know that when they implement "new lower rates", it always costs sellers more. Always. It will this time too. I made a prediction awhile back that prices on eBay are going to go up overall, maybe by as much as 20%. I hold to that, though I can't defend it with any hard data.

As for a shopping cart, that may bring eBay up to industry standards - it's a common thing on most online sites.   Hopefully it'll work with no glitches. As sellers we shouldn't even be aware of it's existence.

Blogger's spell checker doesnt seem to be working - so be kind.

Wordless Wednesday 06-29-2011

2011-06-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

Pickles the Dog Vents

2011-06-27T21:35:00.000-04:00

It's hot these days, and even tho the dog and I take our walk in the morning (2 miles, give or take), the heat and the humidity are quite evident.

We have several routes we can take, but I've found that on most occasions I'm following the path with the most shady spots. When we pass from sun to shade the change in temperature is quite noticeable, at least to me. Of course humans perspire differently than dogs, so I don't know if Pickles notices it as much. But I sure do. I do know that if given a choice of laying down in the sun or the shade, she'll pick the shade every time. Me too, for that matter.

No matter what, when we get back from these walks, sweat is literally dripping off me, and the dog is involved in some very heavy panting. We've both developed an after dog walk routine - I stand under a ceiling fan and luxuriate in the cool air blowing down on my sweat covered self. Pickles plants herself right over top of an air conditioning vent. She does that so much now that we say she's venting.

After a couple of minutes we both go somewhere else.

Books I've read lately.

2011-06-21T21:50:00.001-04:00

I've been remiss on writing about books I've been reading, so I shall do so now. Quickly. I'm not going to go into a lot of details, tho. Or worry too much about grammatical conventions. Just 'cause.

First I read "Five People You Meet In Heaven". I can't remember the author. It was a mystical little book about an elderly amusement park worker who died in a work related accident, while trying to save a small girl from the same fate. After his death he meets 5 people who's lives he impacted, some of whom he'd never known while he was alive. Basically his whole life history comes out with these people, and it was interesting. The author's concept of Heaven though has nothing to do with religion, at least not with Judeo-Christian traditions. You've seen the same concept a thousand times in movies & TV shows. Heaven is not a physical place but a state of mind, and it's different for each person. Not sure that'd past muster with a Baptist preacher.

I also read "The Summons" by John Grisham. This was a good story, I don't think John Grisham writes bad stories, but there wasn't anything great about it. In this book an elderly judge is dieing, and he summons he two sons (hence the title) to his Mississippi home, supposedly to settle the estate. But he dies before they arrive, and the more responsible brother finds boxes filled with cash. Something over $3,000,000. His father never earned more than $50,000 a year in his life, so something strange has happened. The rest of the book deals with the money, and has a semi strange (but only semi) twist. Not bad reading.

Then I read Ken Follet's "The Man From St. Petersburg", which I thought was very good. The main characters are Felix, a Russian anarchist, and Lady Charlotte, the daughter of the Earl of Walden, and it is set in the summer of 1914, in the months preceding the start of World War I. It's kind of a spy story, but not really, and it gives vivid descriptions of British society & customs in the early 20th century. Prince Alexsey has come to England to negotiate a treaty. The British negotiator is the Earl, who happens to be the Prince's cousin by marriage. Felix knows that if the negotiations succeed, Russia will enter the coming war on the side of England and France & he wants to stop that. Not out of love for Germany, he just doesnt want Russia to go to war. So the story is about his attempts to assassinate the Prince. Now there is a history between Felix & the Earl of Walden's wife, the result of which was Lady Charlotte, tho the Earl doesn't know. And Lady Charlotte is coming of age and is expressing a lot of interest in politics, the suffragette movement and society as a whole, much to her mother's dismay. Felix and Charlotte meet, and she is drawn into the web. I liked this book a lot.

And I also read "Precious Victims" by a couple of authors who names I can't remember. This is a true crime book, and tho it told an almost unbelievable story, I thought it was very poorly written. There were a ton of people in the book, so that was hard to keep straight, and many times they were referred to in one sentence by their first name and the next by their last name, so that just added to the confusion. The book tells about a couple in Illinois (not to far from St. Louis I gather), Robert and Paula Sims, who had three children in the 1980s. Both daughters were found dead, and Paula Sims, who gave unbelievable stories in both cases, was convicted of murdering the 2nd daughter. That's about all I want to say about it, it was pretty tedious. And not Kafka tedious, but bad writing tedious. It looked like it was written in a hurry, and could have used a bit more editing. And it could have been a lot shorter.

I'm one to talk, I know.

Not sure what I'm going to read next.

Wordless Wednesday 06-15-2011

2011-06-15T20:31:00.000-04:00

Just One Thing

2011-06-12T16:47:00.001-04:00

I have discovered that no matter where you go, there's almost always a road nearby.

Wordless Wednesday 6-8-2011

2011-06-08T16:09:00.000-04:00

Birds in the Birdbath

2011-06-05T10:09:00.001-04:00

This is a bunch of birds in our little bird bath, just outside a window in an area shaded by a large oak. I took several pictures, but I had to take them thru the window because they'd skedaddle as soon as I opened the door, no matter how quietly. I think there are 8 in this picture, but there had been as many as 12.

It's unusual for this many birds to be in our small bird bath at one time. Normally it's just a couple at a time, sometimes with others waiting for their turn. But these guys were having a party in there, literally drinking & splashing out almost all the water. There were one or two who seemed to be trying to take charge of things, but they weren't having much luck.

I think these were juvenile delinquent type birds. I think they hatched not too terribly long ago and are the equivalent of teenagers in the bird world. I think they're all brothers, sisters & cousins. In a month or two they'll be all grown up and burdened with their bird responsibilities, scatter to the wind and won't have time frivolities like seeing how many birds can pile into a bird bath. This has been going on for a couple of days, I don't expect it to go on too much longer.

Our eBay Month - May 2011

2011-06-04T11:19:00.000-04:00

Well April is no longer our worse sales month this year. May now holds that dubious honor.

Our business is really divided into three sections, 1) postcards 2) photographs 3)Victorian Trade Cards.  We sell other random items occasionally, but the core of our business by far is the sale of single postcards (as opposed to postcard 'lots') and old photographs. Although I consider Trade Cards to be a main part of the business, postcards and photos is where we concentrate most of the energy.

Our sales of postcards in May was about average. We actually sold more postcards in May than we did in April, and for a somewhat higher price. Our sales of photos & trade cards were below average. In fact Trade Cards only generated about 1/3rd of the money they did in April.

The trade card sales data in April is a tad askew however, because one of our cards sold for a lot of money. It got multiple bids, and kept going up and up. I remember when it hit $40.00, we looked at each other and wondered what these people knew that we didn't. It went a lot higher, and as a result the we got quite a bit more money for Trade Cards in April than normal, even though we sold pretty much the same number of cards we always do. Honestly, I would have been happy with $5.00 for that card, and I still don't know what was so special about it.

So in May, postcard and photo sales were roughly equal (actually a little higher) than in April, but Trade Card sales were not. Hence our gross sales were somewhat lower.   Also, as luck would have it, our business expenses were higher in May than in April. It all combined to make May a dismal month net sales wise. April was a bad month, May was worse.

Now a serious question is why have April & May been so poor? I'm keeping my eye on "Free Shipping". We recently expanded it.   Not the best timing perhaps - the post office increased their rates - but eBay is implementing changes which make offering Free Shipping advantageous.   However I think this may be a culprit. Shipping costs are consistently our 2nd highest monthly expense, & we'll have to watch this closely. If sales don't increase as a result of free shipping, we lose money.

The first 4 days of June have been very good though, I have no idea if it will hold or not. So far the best month this year has been January.

Wordless Wednesday 6-1-2011

2011-06-01T14:38:00.000-04:00

Wordless Wednesday 5-25-2011

2011-05-25T20:00:00.002-04:00

Things I've Noticed About Movies & TV Shows

2011-05-24T16:43:00.000-04:00

In movies, especially, whenever anyone comes home from grocery shopping they're always carrying a paper bag with a loaf of French Bread sticking out of it.

Almost no one goes to the bathroom. Occasionally they do for comedic or shock value, but it's not a normal everyday thing like it is for everybody else. One exception was Pulp Fiction, where John Travolta's visits to the toilet seemed to be part of the story. But as a rule, movie people are a non-excremental species.

In movies people can take all kinds of falls without getting hurt. I've got some news - skidding on concrete hurts.

Ever watch 24? The whole series is supposed to be about a 24 hr period. But no one seemed to get tired, hungry, or have the above mentioned need to go to the bathroom.

In most movies no one ever just stops or starts a car. They burn rubber, slam on breaks, you can't start or stop in a movie without squealing tires.

-- an aside. I watched a lot of The Soprano's and I noticed that whenever Christopher showed up at your door unannounced, nothing good was going to happen to you. Didnt matter if he was smiling.

In the movies a person can be gravely wounded and shake it off, but as soon as someone tries to bandage the wound, it suddenly hurts.

The movie world is a very violent place, and no one seems to run out of ammunition, no matter how much they shoot without reloading.

New Blog

2011-05-23T15:55:00.000-04:00

I started a new blog - Postcards & Photos. Guess what it's about? There's also a link on the side bar.

Sunday Thoughts - dog walks, dreams, twitter and cherries.

2011-05-22T12:06:00.000-04:00

Supposedly it's only 79 degrees (at not quite noon), but Pickles and I are here to tell you that it was very warm on our walk this morning. The air is thick, heavy, with very little if any breeze & both our tongues were hanging out by the time we were done. Well, that's life in the eastern United States.

On our walk I noticed swarms of very tiny gnat like things flying around. I avoided them. Again, life in the eastern United States.

One thing I didn't avoid though was shady spots. It makes a difference.

For two weeks in a row now, I've forgotten about Wednesday.

I'm wondering about dreams. For the most part I know I dream, but I can't remember them. Sometimes I remember flashes of them, and sometimes I remember what I think is the whole thing. But it's quite rare that I have any recollection of the details of a dream - I just remember I had it. What I can remember tho is that my dreams all seem to have a thread of tension in them. I have to be somewhere I can't get to, or I'm lost, or I've not been doing something I've needed to get done, and on and on. They seem odd to me, but I doubt they are anything special.

I found I like twitter better than facebook. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm much more likely to throw a weird blurb out to the ether on twitter than I am on facebook. In fact I only check in on fb occasionally.

I'm thinking of starting a postcard blog, where I'd post pictures of postcards I like, which may or may not be for sale. Maybe I'll include photos too.

Patti bought a bunch of sour cherries at the farmer's market Friday. She wasn't sure what to do with them, so I suggested this. Pour them in a bowl, add a cup of milk, a couple cups of sugar, some butter, an egg or two, a couple tablespoons of Hershey's Cocoa, a little bit of baking soda, mix it all up, add some flour until it's thick, maybe 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract, pour it into a 9 x 12 inch pan, cook at 325 degrees for 20-25 mins or so, then let it cool and cut into bars. Spit out any stems and pits you may encounter while eating. It appears she had other ideas tho.

Can't take a picture of a smell

2011-05-16T20:56:00.000-04:00

This is from a large lilac bush (so I'm told - to me it's just a bush with white flowery things) at a corner of our property. A few days ago Patti cut a few pieces off and stuck them in a jar with water, and now the whole house is filled with it's ~~odor~~ fragrance. (I need an emoticon here so everybody knows I'm smiling). It has assumed it's place with assorted other plants we have.

I'm partial to succulents myself, there's something about them that makes me wonder. But I digress.

It's actually pretty nice. It has a strong fragrance and I can see how something like this could trigger allergies in people who are sensitive to such things. But we're not, so it's nice, sort of like nature's air freshener. It's been on the table for 3 days & it won't last much longer. But on the other hand, there's plenty more where that came from.

I really know nothing about lilacs.

It is impossible to take a picture of a smell, so I can't do it justice. So just imagine.

More Free Shipping

2011-05-09T18:22:00.004-04:00

We've decided to put free shipping on just about everything we sell (domestically) in our eBay store. For over a year we've offered free shipping on postcards, but charged for large postcard lots, cabinet photos, cdvs and so on. We've made the decision to offer free shipping on all the other items we sell and ship domestically. International sales will still have a shipping charge.

At this point we're not charging shipping on any new items we list. Some of the older items still have a shipping charge, but those are slowly but surely being removed. In a month or two, pretty much nothing will have a shipping charge. On the older items we're not (for the most part) raising the price - so in effect by removing the shipping charge we're reducing prices on the vast majority of our inventory.

In order for free shipping to work, you have to know how much it costs to ship your item, and figure that into the listing price, if possible. You have to ship things safely, but you also have to be efficient about it. It takes experience to get the hang of it all.

In the best of all possible worlds, free shipping leads to increased sales. Free shipping worked well for us with the postcards - there was a noticable increase in sales. It remains to be seen if it will work with the photos. Photos are different - they're more delicate, they require more packing to ship safely, and because of all that they cost more to ship. Also the people who collect photos are generally not the same as the people who collect postcards, and we just don't know how this is going to work. It's a bit of a risk we're taking, we'll have to see how it goes.

It doesn't help that the post office recently increased shipping rates on many services.

For quite awhile now eBay has encouraged seller's to offer free shipping. eBay recently announced a change which will take effect in July (unless they move it back) that removes one of the biggest incentives for sellers NOT to offer free shipping. In July, eBay is going to charge a Final Value Fee (FVF) - the fee they charge sellers when an item sells - on the entire selling price. Right now they do not charge an FVF on the shipping charge.

Right now if a seller sells an item at a fixed price of $10.00 with a $2.00 s&h charge eBay charges a $1.20 FVF. If another seller sells the same item for $12.00 with no s&h charge, eBay charges $1.44 FVF. There is quite an incentive to charge a lower price for the item with a reasonable s&h charge.

After July they're going to lower the FVF by 1% (BFD if you catch my drift), but also include the s&h charge in the FVF calculation. Under this scenario both sellers would pay a FVF of $1.32. This removes the advantage a seller has by charging shipping & handling.

eBay also offers a "free shipping" search filter, enabling a buyer to search only for those items with free shipping. I have no idea how many people make use of that, but it's only reasonable to assume some do. So this new policy does a bit more than level the playing field - it actually gives a bit of an advantage to people who offer free shipping.

One thing I learned long before I started with eBay is that nothing ever remains the same. If you can't drive the change, you have to adjust. eBay is something I have no control over, so I adjust.

Instant Agony

2011-05-08T21:54:00.001-04:00

It was Thursday morning when Pickles the Dog was happily greeting me, I bent down to pet her and was subjected instantly to massive amounts of lower back pain. File this away in the tenuousness of life department.

Stuff like this has been going on with me for the last 15 years or so. Every now and then I hurt my back doing a simple task I've done a hundred times - like petting the dog. Or getting out of bed. Weird. I suspect, though I don't want to admit, that somethings going on back there in the old spinal column.

Thursday morning, Pickles and I were able to complete our normal 2 mile walk, but I felt pain with every step. Friday morning, I could not do the walk - we didn't walk much further than the end of our driveway. This morning, we made it around the block, about a mile, still pain with every step. Tomorrow I'll try to complete a normal walk with her. It's good for both of us.

Still feeling pain, but not as badly.

What bugs me about all this is how quickly things can change. You're just going on minding your own business and suddenly you're in almost constant pain. Just can't take anything for granted.

If this behaves the way things have in the past, eventually the pain will go away and things will be back to normal.

For some people the pain doesn't go away, and it's hard to imagine how they cope with it. Chronic pain is not something I normally deal with, so I guess I'll continue to count my blessings.

Wordless Wednesday 5-4-2011

2011-05-04T16:02:00.000-04:00

Our eBay Month - April 2011

2011-05-01T13:39:00.003-04:00

April was the worst month for us so far in 2011.   I realize there's only been 4 full months this year, but we'd have to go back to October of last year to find a month where we ended up with less money than April. Now, April wasn't the worst month this year by much - we took in literally only a few dollars less than in February, but February was a shorter month, and included a holiday.

A quick word about how I measure things. eBay and I disagree on when an actual sale occurs. For eBay, when a buyer commits to buy an item, that's a sale and they charge the final value fee. But the buyer may not pay immediately - a few times in the past year they didn't pay at all. So I don't count it as a sale until I actually receive payment, and I don't track it on my spreadsheet until I ship it.

What this means is that in reality I track money and expenses on things we ship, on the day we ship them, as opposed to the day they sell, or even the day we receive the money.  We ship items every day the post office is open - Monday thru Saturday. April had 26 shipping days, February had only had 23.

April 2011 was significantly lower than March 2011, literally within dollars of the February totals, but much higher than April 2010. In fact 2011 has been MUCH better than 2010 up to this point.

I compared the April spreadsheet with February's. The gross was almost the same and eBay listing and Final Value Fees were within 25 cents of each other. What made the difference was our business expenses (packaging material, printer ink etc) and postage costs were each a few dollars more in April. That was the difference. Otherwise it was February all over again.

We made a change in how we do business in April, un-announced and un-advertised. In May of 2010 we started offering free shipping domestically for postcards.   We still charged shipping for the photos, because they are more expensive to ship. Well last month we begin offering free shipping on just about everything. We've kept the shipping charge (for now) on any old listings, but new listings of antique photos, cdvs and such will be listed with no shipping charge. I'll be writing a whole other post about this later on.

If possible I want to know why things happen as they do. We expanded our free shipping, and coincidentally, the post office increased it's postage for many things. It makes a difference. At first glance that could appear to be the culprit, and perhaps it did play a role, but I want to know for sure.    So I looked a little closer, tried to figure things out and what I found leads me to believe that free shipping wasn't responsible for this little April income dip.

I know how many items we shipped, and how many "shipping days" there were in April. So I determined the average number of items shipped per day for April, and found that on average we shipped .9 items less per day in April than in March. I also know what the average price we received for an item sold, so I multiplied the avg price by .9, then multiplied that result by 26 (the number of shipping days in April) and came out with HOLY CRAP it makes a difference. It wasn't free shipping at all - it was the fact that we shipped (and by extension sold) almost one item a day less in April than in March. It makes the difference between a good month and an average month.

The bigger question, which I can't really answer, it why sales were down in April. That's something I'll have to think about and keep an eye on.

Wordless Wednesday 4-27-2011

2011-04-27T16:48:00.000-04:00

Just thinking about Snowchief

2011-04-25T20:46:00.000-04:00

I was just thinking about Snowchief the cat. This is a picture of him in better times, 2 or 3 years ago. He died last year, I think he was 18 years old.

This was a typical scene, especially in his later years. He made an art form out of being comfortable, of finding he warmest spot in the house, especially on cold days.

I miss having a cat or two about the place. It's almost like having a wild animal in the house, and they keep mice and bugs honest.

Now we have Pickles, a very "interesting" dog, but we're hesitant to bring in another cat (or two) into the house. Pickles is a tracker of small animals. She is a real threat to the day-dreaming squirrel, the rabbit who decides to take five and kick back with one of Fidel's finest, the half feral cat so intent on stalking its prey it doesn't realize a goofy ticked-up mutt is literally sneaking up on it. The only thing Pickles has ever actually caught was a dead rat, which she happily brought and laid at our doorstep. Very cat-like. I suppose she was saying thanks for the room and board.

Snowchief would have never given up the rat, seeing no need to thank us for the room and board.

I've never seen a rat or a mouse around the house, so who knows, maybe Pickles is better at this than we realize.

Snowchief the Cat could handle Pickles the Dog. Pickles was not Snowchief's first experience with dogs - he lived a solid 10 years with a Black Lab, who he got along very well with. Pickles was a puppy, and was very much an aggravation to the cat, but Snowchief almost always held his ground. I'm pretty sure Pickles just wanted to play, but had no clue she couldn't play with a cat the same way she played with other dogs. Maybe. I really don't know what Pickles thinks.

Anyway, Snowchief was around for a lot of years. He was a good cat, and I was just thinking about him.

Wordless Wednesday 04-20-2011

2011-04-20T16:10:00.000-04:00

Back from Kentucky

2011-04-17T20:21:00.003-04:00

Just got back from a quick trip to Kentucky, where heavy rains swelled the usually miled mannered creeks in Knott County. This picture was taken in the outer reaches of Hindman, the county seat. Troublesome Creek barely crept over its banks in a couple of places, so there was no flooding in town. But it was up pretty good and moving fast, and continued to rise long after the rain stopped. You wouldn't want to fall in.

The heavy rains in Kentucky were nothing compared to the winds & tornadoes in North Carolina, but by the time I got back all that was over with. We live in the western part of the state, and while I understand it was very stormy here, the severe damage happened much further east. We've had a series of quite violent storms this month, so far Valdese has been lucky.

My father, brother & I (in Kentucky) were sitting around talking about an elderly and "eccentric" neighbor, when my brother said "That old woman would irritate a rock".

Friday night we were entertained by a vacuum cleaner salesmen I inadvertently let into my father's house. It would require more explanation than anybody would care to read, but for some reason I thought they knew each other. From him I picked up a little tidbit that the vacuum cleaner has "no cost, but there is a price". I decided I'd remember that.

Blumfeld, Part II - or - Kafka's Balls.

2011-04-14T16:46:00.001-04:00

As I suspected and feared, the bouncing balls in "Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor" were never explained.

When last I left the story, Blumfeld had trapped the balls in his wardrobe, and was trying to give them to the charwoman's son. This had to be a convoluted transaction, because Blumfeld was afraid the balls would follow him if he got anywhere near them. He needed to give the key to his wardrobe to the boy, then the boy would have to get the key to his room from the the charwoman (the boy's mother) then go get the balls, then give both keys back to his mother. The boy was dense and could not understand what he needed to do or why, but there were two little girls there who grasped the instructions clearly, so Blumfeld reluctantly gave them the key to his wardrobe. They raced downstairs to the charwoman to get the key to his room, and Blumfeld left for work. And that is the last the two bouncing balls are mentioned.

Blumfeld holds a supervisory position in a linen factory. He's in charge of accounts etc for women who do piece work.   He has two assistants (both incompetent in his eyes), and a servant who cleans up around the place. He had to beg his boss (who doesn't understand the complexities of the work) for assistants, and finally he got some, but now he feels his boss took an extra long time in order to find the dullest, most incompetent people possible. He had hoped to train them and they they'd take initiative on their own, but that hasn't happened. Blumfeld is convinced that if he dies or leaves the company, everything will fall apart because no one but him knows the complexities involved.

I suspect that what has really happened is that the industry has changed, new technologies of sorts have been introduced and the world has passed Blumfeld by & he doesn't realize it. But you have to infer that, everything in the story is from Blumfeld's point of view.

Now, back to the balls. If a character in a story I was writing came home one day and found balls bouncing in his room, bouncing in sync and following him around, with energy levels more or less reflecting his own, with no means of locomotion, I would probably feel compelled to explain how that could be. But, I'm not Kafka. Kafka feels no need for an explanation.

I've not read the Cliff Notes on this, so I don't really have a clue.

It is interesting that there are lots of "pairs" in the story. The balls, the assistants, the charwoman and her son (both dullards in Blumfeld's eyes), the two little girls (smart but untrustworthy, per Blumfeld). I don't believe in literary co-incidences, but then what do I know. Even the fact that Kafka chose the share the information that Blumfeld is a bachelor in the title instead of drawing it out is the story may have significance. But I can't draw any lines to explain anything. I can't connect the dots. I don't even know where the dots are. I don't know what it all means.   I understood the words, I followed the story, but I'm missing something.

I just know that Blumfeld is a very typical main character for a Kafka story.   And anytime I get through a Kafka story, it's a victory.

Wordless Wednesday 4-13-2011

2011-04-13T15:42:00.000-04:00

Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor

2011-04-11T20:27:00.000-04:00

I've been reading a fair amount of books lately. I read "Battle Ready" by Tom Clancy which details the career of Marine General Tony Zinni. It jogged my memory a bit about being in the Army, and drove home the fact that I really did not have the personality for it. If I were in combat and an enemy who was trying to kill me suddenly withdrew, I personally would not be inclined to chase him down. My personal reaction would be something on the order of relief at having survived a fire fight, and I'd be happy to let him go. When someone has the motivation & means to kill you, it's down right dangerous to go chasing after them. It's just as easy to get yourself killed by troops who are retreating as it is by troops who are charging. However, that is not really the right attitude to take. When an enemy is on the ropes you finish him off, otherwise he'll keep coming back, and one day he'll get you. General Zinni seemed to love every challenge the military threw at him, in fact he sought it out.

I also read "Flashback" by Gary Braver which seem to me to be a pretty standard run of the mill made for TV movie book about corporate greed in the pharmaceutical industry. It was better than anything I could write, but it was pretty predictable.

And I read "Aftershocks" by Richard S. Wheeler, about the immediate aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. That was a historical novel of sorts, and it followed the lives of 5 or 6 people, who for the most part, did not interact with each other so you had several stories going. I never knew that much about the 1906 earthquake, so this filled in a few holes.   It was pretty good. There's so much I don't know. Lots of times when I read things it makes me want to learn more.

These books came from a thrift store, and I find myself temporarily without unread books about.

So, with a heavy heart, having nothing else to read, I picked up my copy of the complete stories of Franz Kafka, and chose a story more or less at random.   "Blumfeld, An Elderly Bachelor" is 23 pages long, and as always, before I start a Kafka story I make my peace with the world. I ask myself if I want to suffer through 23 pages of something that will surely be odd, and maybe never make any sense. I don't really want to, but the curiosity is overwhelming. I know at some point I'm probably going to get lost, but each story loses me in a different way.

So Blumfeld, who lives alone, is trudging up the stairs to his apartment, thinking of all the reasons he doesn't want to own a dog. Most of these reasons have to do with cleanliness - shedding hair and such. When he gets to his apartment, he hears a noise, opens the door to find two balls bouncing in sync. One reaches it's height as the other hits the floor. I remember thinking - here it is, the point in the story (a couple of pages in) of Kafkian oddness. I had no idea that this story involved random bouncing balls.   Balls bouncing for no apparent reason, and with no means of causation. Perpetual motion bouncing balls. The balls followed him around, keeping a certain distance away, and seem to have some sort of feelings. I left the story half way in, I expect to finish it up this evening.   Blumfeld had managed by trickery to trap the balls in his wardrobe, and was trying to give them to the Charwoman's son, who seemed very dense and didn't quite understand.   Now I wonder how the story will end, and what other twists will be coming in it, and if the bouncing balls will be explained. I seriously doubt it.

Think kind thoughts.

Some more thoughts

2011-04-09T15:15:00.000-04:00

Managed to get the north 40 mowed, despite lightening & thunder in the distance, and what looked like rain headed our way. I saw it as a challenge.

I don't know how many more thrift stores Valdese Main Street can support.

Once again the phone rings. Once again I don't answer it. Ah, but Patti's curiosity cannot be contained.

It would be neat if someone would sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" at my funeral. It doesnt have anything to do with my life, I just like the song. A recording would be fine, but a chorus backing up someone channeling Freddie Mercury would be better.

Pickles the dog is experiencing her afternoon crazies. Something she has a lot of fun with is an empty plastic bottle. Dogs are so easy to please.

Wordless Wednesday 04-06-2011

2011-04-06T15:11:00.001-04:00

I reckon

2011-04-04T20:02:00.000-04:00

Saturday, while I found myself doing some manual labor, I said something to Patti, and she replied "I reckon". I forgot what it was I said, but I knew exactly what she meant.

I've lived lots of places in this country - from Leominster, Massachusetts to Monterey, California, from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota to Killeen (and San Angelo), Texas. I spent many years in Maryland (Baltimore area), and now North Carolina. And several years in Europe.

There is no "normal" way of speaking American English. People who were born and raised in Baltimore have an especially unique way of saying things. And people from surrounding counties speak just differently enough that you know they're from central Maryland, but not quite from Baltimore.

I spent my early years in southeastern Kentucky and was surrounded by people who'd use "I reckon" with impunity. So when I was let loose into the wider world, I didn't think a thing about it, but I soon learned otherwise. Once you cross north of that great divide that is the Ohio River, common usage of "I reckon" diminishes exponentially. It's not something they hear everyday, and to their ears it seems archaic and quaint, and old way of speaking. If I let an "I reckon" slip in Minneapolis it was noticed.

I'm sure "reckon" used the way it's used in the southern USA is an older way of getting an idea across, but there is nothing quaint about it. It is deceptively complex, in fact. If you havent heard it or used it all your life when you do hear the words they'll really stick out, but you'll miss a lot the subtleties of meaning. One of the biggies is, is it used at the beginning or the end of a sentence? It's all context and tone of voice. It can mean a lot of things, and apparently I'm bilingual this respect because I understand it very well. Pretty sure.

It is also one of my 3 favorite common phrases used south of the Ohio River:

I reckon as in "I reckon"
Fixinta as in "I'm fixinta eat me a hamburger"
Likedta as in "It likedta killed me"

It's been awhile since I expounded on any aspect of spoken English as I know it. I was just thinking & that's all this was about.

Our eBay Month - March 2011

2011-04-02T14:00:00.001-04:00

There's so many ways of looking at things. I have no idea which the best way is. Maybe I should have eschewed graduate studies in history and got that MBA after all, but I have no idea what insights a person with an MBA would bring to bear on our little eBay business.   Well I can think of one, perhaps.

Suffice it to say, we made a bit more money in March, than in February, but a little less than January. So far January has been the year's high point. Also, the only reason we made more money in March than in February is because March has more days in it. The average per day of sales in March was actually a little less than previous month.   And this is scary - over 1/3 of the total income for the month came on ony 3 days of sales. Without those 3 very good days, or if those 3 days had just been normal sales days, the month would have been a disaster, sales wise.

I keep track of a lot of things, but I can't always make sense of them. For example, our busiest sales day in January was Monday, in February it was Tuesday, and in March it was Saturday. I have no idea what to read into that. It was the same way last year. I'd hope over a long period of time I'd begin to see a pattern, then see if I could use it to increase sales somewhat. So far, nothing absolute.

I know that on average the number of items we sell daily has remained virtually the same during the 3 months of the year. March & Feb were exactly the same (but again, March had more days than Feb) and both were just a touch higher than January.

The thing that has made the difference so far this year, the thing that made January the best month so far was the sale of antique photos.   We ask more for them on average than we do the postcards, and for some reason we sold a lot more in January than we did in Feb or March. Our postcard sales are still steady, actually increasing modestly, but the photo sales are more erratic.

Maybe the photos are the key.

At any rate our little business churns along, producing money we otherwise would not have.

No Parking

2011-03-31T17:14:00.003-04:00

Pickles and I have several dog walking routes. The most common route takes me down Praley Street (in this case down = north), across the rail road tracks and on to a long narrow stretch of grass between the tracks and a steep wooded bank leading up to Massel street.    The last time I walked there I realized this narrow stretch of grass is the closest thing Valdese has to a park anywhere near walking distance to the downtown area.

There is a park just east of town off Route 70, and McGalliard Falls to the northwest. McGalliard Falls is a pretty little place, and very well used on a warm summer day, but neither of these parks are in walking distance, and neither would be safe to walk to in any case.  There is also a nice path down by the waterworks, and it does have a picnic table. People use it for walking & jogging, and lots of dogs get walked there, but it's several miles outside of town. There's the elementary school, located strategically behind Butch's BBQ & the car wash, and I see people walking and jogging around the track that circles a football field, and people can certainly use it for recreation from time to time. It's certainly within walking distance of downtown, but it isn't a park. I'd feel conspicuous spreading out a blanket and digging into a picnic basket in the midst of 5th grade PE activities.

Maybe there are other places close to downtown.   Back in my teenage years I'd have been all over this place & known about all sorts of out of the way areas. But these days I tend to be a tad more reclusive, so it's very possible there are places I don't know about.

Recently there was a vacant lot of land, nice big trees etc down on Main Street.   It wouldn't have been much of a park, but put up some places to sit and a few things for the kids & you'd have a nice shady RE-spite on a hot summer day. But a rich person owned it and got the towns permission to turn it into a monument to himself. I have to admit it does turn heads as you're driving by, especially if you've never seen it before.  You have all these normal buildings then all of a sudden there's a dug out area with statues, stadium seating (sort of) and a fancy gate keeping people out. It'll probably be open to the public occasionally for this or that, but for the most part it's an unusable space.

Just barely within walking distance of downtown there is a good large open area - looks like it was a football field for the old high school. This was purchased some years ago (before I moved here) by this same rich person who, guess what, built a monument to himself. It's actually quite elaborate and I know cost a lot of bucks. It's called the "Trail of Faith", and it documents the history of the northern Italian Waldensians, and it is interesting and educational. I took a tour once. They have fireworks there July 4th, and it's opened maybe a couple of other times during the year for a weekend or so. And that's it. It's privately owned, and though its in easy view from Church Street, it is essentially closed to the public 50 weeks plus out of the year. Perhaps it's open for scheduled tour groups, I'm not sure, but it isn't a place you can go visit on the spur of a moment or take a dog and let it run loose.   Some may argue it's not in walking distance of downtown anyhow (others may argue a whole lot more than that), but if you cut a corner or two, perhaps walk thru someone's yard, it is. If you have the physical ability to take advantage of a park, you could walk to this place.

Valdese is not a big place, so there's probably nothing to be done about it. And even if there was, I'm pretty sure nothing would get done about it.   Morganton, just to the west, is quite a bit bigger and does have a nice park system, complete with river walks and such.    There are parks in the area, but it would be nice if there was something within walking distance, close to downtown.

Wordless Wednesday 03-30-2011

2011-03-30T13:36:00.004-04:00

Lightening Thoughts

2011-03-26T21:59:00.002-04:00

How many thoughts can I think of in 5 mins? Here goes.

I notice I put my left shoe on before my right shoe in the morning. I forced myself to put my right shoe on first this morning & it felt weird. I'm right handed, so I don't understand.

Today I realized that I've lived in Valdese, NC for so long that I think Hickory - 20 miles east and 10 times larger - is a big city.

Dogs, bless their hearts, are dumb. And the human race is better off because of it.

I mowed grass a few days ago. Now the grass is growing again. Argggh.

I had a dream within a dream last night. I'd wake up and say I had a strange dream and someone else would say, "that was me, I caused you to have that dream". I watched all this from a corner of a room & never questioned why someone would be sitting at the edge of my bed directing my dreams. Dreams are like that.

If I could type faster, I could probably write more stuff.

And I hate it when I have a minute to go and I can't think of anything.

Times up.

Another Look At Free Shipping

2011-03-20T11:41:00.005-04:00

We sell stuff on eBay, and for a long time now eBay has been encouraging sellers to offer free shipping on items they sell. They've done this through various incentives and other passive means, but it's still to the seller's financial advantage to NOT offer free shipping. Besides charging a listing fee, eBay also charges a final value fee (FVF) based the items selling price. Currently eBay does not include the shipping and handling charge in the FVF calculations.

So right now you have a strange situation in which sellers asking the same amount of money for the same item will be charged different fee amounts based on the shipping and handling charged, with those charging the most for shipping and handling paying the least in fees and thus making more profit.

For Example: Seller A, B & C have an identical items they are selling at a fixed price.

Seller A asks $5.99 with free shipping; Seller B asks $4.00 with $1.99 S&H; and Seller C asks .99 with $5.00 S&H. They all sell their items. Currently Seller C is only charged the FVF on .99, while seller A is charge the FVF on the entire amount. The buyer has paid $5.99 in each case, but seller C has made the most profit, because his FVF was less. In the current structure I think Seller A is charged a $0.72 FVF on the sale, while Seller C is only charged a $0.12 FVF on the sale.

That's about to change. eBay announced earlier this week that they are going to start charging FVF on the entire sale price, including the shipping & handling charge. (I think in July). This means that in the example above, all the sellers would pay the same amount of FVF - there's no advantage for a seller to add a shipping and handling fee. In fact, that change coupled with the the other incentives for free shipping makes it advantageous for a seller to NOT charge a shipping and handling fee.

For the most part we sell postcards and various sorts of antique photos. For a year now we've offered free shipping on our postcard sales. We still charge a fee for the photos, because they require more expense in packaging & shipping. We may re-evaluate that, we'll have to see.

So far it's worked out well for us. Our postcard sales have increase quite a bit over this time last year, our photo sales perhaps a little bit, but not as much as the postcards. That may simply be because we have more postcards for sale. I'm not sure.

Shipping is a major expense for us, we track our shipping costs to the penny and there is nothing free about it.  When sellers offer free shipping, most of the time they will ask a higher price for the item, and frequently it is higher than the previous asking + shipping combined. This is because the seller not only has to cover the cost of shipping, but has to account for the extra cost in fees. In our case, before we started offering free shipping on postcards we had many postcards starting at $0.99 with $1.25 shipping & handling, for a total of $2.24 for the card. When we converted to free shipping, we asked $2.99 for the same cards, which means someone who bought the card with free shipping paid $0.75 more than they would have with the $1.25 shipping charge. As sellers we didn't really see that extra $0.75 - pretty much all of it and then some went to the post office for shipping costs and to eBay in the form of a higher FVF.

FVF takes a good sized chunk out of a seller's profit, by the way. For the category most of my sales are in, the FVF for a fixed price item sold out of an eBay store is 12%. So if I sell an item for $10.00, eBay gets $1.20 of that.  Believe me, it adds up. I think eBay is going to lower their FVF to 11%, with this change, but that's not much.

When eBay announced these changes I smiled and thought there's going to be a holy uproar on the discussion boards. Of course it wasn't like that was a major prediction or anything. There is always an uproar on the discussion boards about one thing or another. For the most part I stopped reading the boards, it doesn't do me any favors and there is very little good or reasonable advice there. I expect eBay to make changes, and I expect the changes they make will benefit their bottom line as a corporation. I expect to pay attention & adjust.

Since we sell most of our items with free shipping, this change doesn't really bother us that much. Speaking for myself only, it doesn't bother me at all. In fact I think it's advantageous for our little business because we've adjusted to free shipping (and having an FVF charged on the entire sale price) for a over a year now.  We've figured it out and are doing fine with it. I'd like to say I predicted eBay would eventually make this change but I didn't, we just thought offering free shipping might give us a competitive advantage if we did it right. We work hard at being competitive.

I will make a prediction though. I don't know if it will be correct and I don't really have the capability of determining if it will be or not. But my prediction is that prices are going to rise on eBay, by at least 15%, probably more, very quickly.   I'll be keeping a close eye on my competitors.

500 Faces

2011-03-18T16:35:00.002-04:00

This is a CDV I bought recently, the only single CDV I've ever purchased. I usually buy them in groups of 5 to 50, but this one interested me. It is a picture of about 500 people, and according to a caption written a the bottom, each one is easily identifiable with a hand held magnifying glass.

Anyone who knows anything about 19th century advertising knows that being truthful about the product being advertised was not anywhere near a requirement. So I have my doubts about how easy it is to identify anyone. I can identify three, one who I'm pretty sure is William Shakespeare, and of course George Washington & Abraham Lincoln. I didn't need a magnifying glass for any of them, but my glasses sure helped.

I'm pretty sure that this was made in the USA, even with the absence of photographer information. In addition to Washington & Lincoln, there are several people in the bottom row who look to be wearing US Army dress uniforms of the 19th century. Also, I'm pretty sure Washington & Lincoln would not be considered among the "most celebrated personages of the age" in Europe or Canada. In the USA, different story, so this was almost certainly made in the USA.

I'm certain about the age of this photo too. It's thin, has square corners, a couple of border lines, and in this case no photographer information. It looks like the bottom may have been trimmed. It all points to vintage 1860s-1870s era.

If Abraham Lincoln is in the picture, that probably dates it to some point after his assassination in 1865. I'm sure this is full of government, military and literary types. I'm looking for the Bronte sisters, Lafayette, Edgar Allen Poe, U.S. Grant, George Custer, George McClellan and various others. I don't expect to find any leaders of the confederacy represented (if Abe Lincoln is on it during this time frame especially, this was made up north somewhere) but you never know. It would be interesting to see how this list was shaped by the political leanings of whoever made it. For example, McClellan & Lincoln didn't exactly get along with each other, so if Lincoln is on here McClellan might not be.

Thing is, most "celebrated personages" of this period are probably pretty obscure now. I think I'll be looking at this for a long time. If any of you all recognize anybody, leave a comment, I'd appreciate it.

Wordless Wednesday 3-16-2011

2011-03-16T16:15:00.000-04:00

Geography Song

2011-03-10T12:01:00.000-05:00

I ran across this little poem in a book I'm reading. I'd never heard it before. It's funny and light hearted and very out of character with the rest of the book.

The Geograhy Song

Maine is an island in Asia,
France is a river in Spain.
Coconuts grow on a mountain of snow,
Deserts are covered with rain.
Crocodiles come from Chicago,
Silver is mixed in a mill.
Grass is quite rare,
The equator is square,
And Kansas is south of Brazil.

Wordless Wednesday 03-09-2011

2011-03-09T15:22:00.000-05:00

Lately it seems

2011-03-08T15:27:00.001-05:00

Lately it seems, I can't think of anything to write about. When that happens, sometimes I sit down and just start writing. Usually when I do that I end up writing something very similar to the first two sentences of this post. And frequently I end up writing one of my "thoughts" posts, which is little more than a collection of rocks in my head. That's what I'm leaning toward this time, though I have no particular thoughts to expound upon.

Rececently we fullfilled an annual rite of almost-spring - we arranged for our yearly service on the old John Deere. Although the last couple of days have been kind of cool, it's frequently warmer here in North Carolina this time of year than it is in 2/3rds of the country or so, and things are begining to reflect that. What passes for grass has turned green and is growing, a lot of flowers are begining to bloom, there are wild onions all over the place and if you look closely you can see buds on a lot of the trees. Normally I refuse to start mowing until April, but last year I let it go when I really should have mowed one more time, so I think I'm going to pay for it this year. I'll probably have to mow next week. The week after at the latest. I'm not talking a 1/4 acre lot in a suburb somewhere, I have to mow about 2 acres of land, almost none of it flat, and some quite steep. It is very easy to get stuck somewhere, and it is also probably quite easy to do your self serious injury (going sideways over a bank, knocking your head on a limb, getting poked in the eye with something eye level, getting raked by a thorny vine which is very good at holding on, and so on), so mowing is not something I take lightly. I wear saftey glasses, and usually some work gloves, no matter what the temperature is. That won't help much if I run into a tree or plunge into an abyss, but at least it's something.

But anyway, calling someone to come and haul the mower away and do "the works" on it is a rite of approaching spring. I can actually change the oil - it's much easier than changing the oil on a car - but all in all Pickles the Dog has more mechanical aptitude than I do, so I send it off and let them get it all ready for me. It'll come back running a lot smoother than it was when I gave it to them, the blades will be sharpened & balanced, and it may even be good and clean.

Ok - I had no idea I'd end up writing about this. On a scale of things, it's not much to write about, but it's where my mind went. I hate mowing grass.

Wordless Wednesday 03-02-2011

2011-03-02T12:12:00.000-05:00

Our eBay month - Feb 2011

2011-03-01T15:18:00.000-05:00

Hmmmm, why do I dread writing this up? I do not know.

Our sales in February were less than they were in January. I'm not sophisticated enough to sit here an tell the world that therefore we lost X amount of dollars. I'm not a large corporation, and there's no one here I can use that as an excuse to get rid of, and since I have no employees, I certainly can't move operations to Brazil or somewhere where labor is cheaper. So since I'm unsophisticated business wise, I'll simply tell the truth. We made money, but not quite as much as last month.

Both our net & gross were about 15% higher in Jan 2011 than in Feb 2011. Our sales of single postcards were actually a bit higher in February, but sales of antique photos, especially CDVs were down quite a bit, and that is what made the overall difference. (Even though CDV sales were down, they still outsold the other categories of antique photos we sell). January was a very good month for antique photos, much more than is usual for us; February was a fairly normal month for photos.

We ship items Monday thru Saturday, unless the post office is closed for a holiday, or for some reason we're physically unable to. I update the totals on the day we ship them out, it's easier to keep track of that way. January had 24 shipping days (because of holidays), Feb only had 23 - but that extra day would not have made up the difference. March has 27 shipping days, so we'll see how that works out.

We're doing much better than this same period last year. Our net is about 25% higher than the same two month period last year, and our gross over 70% higher in the same period. How can that be? Well, we were still doing a little consignment last year, but not that much - it accounted for a bout 10% of our sales. But I noticed for some reason our business expenses were much higher in Feb 2010 than in Feb of this year, but expenses for Jan 2010 & Jan 2011 were about the same. Consignments may be part of the reason, I also think we're getting some discounts now that we didn't have then. Also we buy things in bulk frequently, such as envelopes, printer paper and other supplies - it's cheaper over the long run, but it bumps up our expense in whatever month we purchase them. No matter the reason, we've done quite a bit better this year than we had at the same point last year. That's good.

As always postcards seem to be pretty steady. I need to figure out how to keep the antique photos at a high level every month. And I'm continuing to add Victorian Trade Cards to the mix, so maybe one day they'll take off.

Monday Thoughts

2011-02-28T21:22:00.000-05:00

Just trying to get back in the habit of writing something. Sometimes when you write, thoughts happen.

I like twitter better than facebook, I'll have to think about why.

My dreams last night involved speedboats racing down a busy highway. Also, I managed to solve a complex problem, but I can't remember what it was.

Ever catch a dog sleeping when it should be working? Humans react similarly.

Dogs work? Pickles' job is to look out the windows & warn us if any cats are around.

Didn't watch the Oscars last night - pretty much forgot all about them.

Did watch part of a Starz version of a Hallmark movie - substitute Henry Winkler for Kevin Klein & take out all the 4 letter words & it could have been a Hallmark Christmas special. You know, where someone always dies on Christmas eve.

Very warm and very windy this morning in beautiful Valdese, NC.

I'm getting my rear-end kicked in some stupid strategy type computer game, and for some reason it irritates me.

The end of February is nigh. The season of grass mowing approaches.

I can think of a lot of reasons why the Mayan calendar ended on the 2012 winter solstice. Most likely they figured that was far enough, though if they had become a dominant civilization the world would be facing some real calendar related issues in the not too distant future.

Sometimes I wished I hadn't sold something.

2011-02-17T20:26:00.001-05:00

We sold this picture on eBay today. I dutifully packaged it up and shipped it off, wishing all the time that I'd kept it, put it in a frame and stuck it on a wall or put it on a shelf somewhere.

Of course it was not a large picture. It had a cardboard backing (I cropped it out for this post), and well over a century ago someone trimmed the backing down to a size where it would fit in a CDV album. It measured 2.5 X 3.75 inches in it's trimmed state.

Even though it was not a size where it would dominate a room or even a section of a wall, it was still an interesting, quirky little picture. I find it sometimes happens that I don't realize how interesting something is until someone buys it.

These gals were young in this picture, in their 20's perhaps. If they lived into their 80's, then they probably died in the 1950s or so. Young people would have looked at them and not have been able to imagine them ever being young.

There was a photographer name (Bautner) on the backing, but no other identifying information at all. I assume these two will remain anonymous, and I really hope the person who bought this picture enjoys it.

Wordless Wednesday 02-16-2011

2011-02-16T21:38:00.000-05:00

Reading again

2011-02-14T19:53:00.001-05:00

Suddenly I'm doing a lot more reading, pretty much 2 books at a time. I have a downstairs book and an upstairs book. I just finished "Feet of Clay" by Terry Pratchett, and I'm fixin' to finish "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson. Both books are part of a series, and both have a mystery & action, but that's pretty much where the similarity ends.

Terry Pratchett is kind of fantasy/sci-fi, but more fantasy, with lots of insight, social commentary and wickedly funny in spots. I'm still laughing about Rogers the bulls who had a very large forehead, meaning each eye had a different view, so he thought he was two animals, so he always refered to himself in the plural, hence Rogers the bulls. That and Wee Mad Arthur, the rat hunter. And Detrius the troll breaking up a chair because a doctor needed a stool sample. And all the heraldry puns. And Fred Colon's attitude toward "detectoring".

Stieg Larsson is mystery/action (and also deceased). He also had very good insight into human behavior, and obviously researched a lot of things. His plots are much more complicated and involved than Pratchett's, and his characters are much more real. But then his characters are all human, and many of Pratchett's arent, and there is at least one where people aren't quite sure one way or the other. Larsson's books are page turners, it's hard to put them down.

So pretty soon I'll be starting on Pratchett's "Jingo", and Larsson's "Hornet's Nest", continuing the series of both authors. I just have to figure out which one will be my upstairs book, and which one will be my downstairs book.

A little history thinking

2011-02-12T15:34:00.001-05:00

Although I rarely mention current events in this blog, I'm not immune to them. In fact I keep up with them pretty well. I just choose not to write about them too much. Anyway, I'm very aware of the events in Egypt, and I wonder about the ramifications.

Frequently revolutions in history work like this: A government is overthrown, another government takes it place, after a period of time (week, months, maybe even years) another type of government takes over.

That's a broad stroke generalization and it may not always happen that way, but it's a frequent occurrence. It happened in the USA - our revolution involved an 8 year violent struggle against a must stronger power. After we won our independence in 1783, the country existed under the Articles of Confederation. This arrangement where the various states were pretty much sovereign and the central government was very weak apparently was not working well, so there was a constitutional convention, the new constitution was created and ratified, a federal style government created, elections were held in 1789 (I think), George Washington was elected president and we've had this federal form of government ever since. But we went through that process of Revolution, Interim Government, Different Government.

In 1917 or 1918 the Russian Czar was overthrown. There was an interim government which I think only lasted a period of months, then the Bolsheviks came to power & the county was pretty much a dictatorship for the next 70 years.

In 1918 the Kaiser in Germany abdicated, and a Republic was established. The Nazi's came to power in the 1932 elections and that was pretty much that until their government (and much of the country) was destroyed during WWII.

In Iran the Shah was overthrown, another government established, and it was overthrown, and the country became an ultra-conservative theocracy.

So a defacto dictator in Egypt has resigned as a result of an uprising. There is apparently an interim government being run by the military. What happens next remains to be seen. If I were a betting person, I'd say the odds of a strong European style parliamentary democracy being established in Egypt are not very good. I'd say the odds are much stronger that another dictatorship (defacto or otherwise) will eventually take hold, though I won't wager on what type of dictatorship it may be. All I'm pretty sure of is that eventually things are going to change, and it'll be interesting to see what kind of change it will be.

Wordless Wednesday 02-09-2011

2011-02-09T16:55:00.000-05:00

Saturday Thoughts 2-5-2011

2011-02-05T11:33:00.001-05:00

It was a cold damp and mystic dog walk this morning. Lots of etherealness everywhere. Tons of firmament. Sharp noises cut through the air, I assumed made by the winged animals, though for the most part I did not see them. I could hear occasional howling behind fences. People passed us by in their mobile self contained artifical climate pods. We trudged on.

I've come to the realization that there are lots of things I'll never experience.

What is socially acceptable in the dog world, is quite frowned upon in human society.

For thousands of years, people have been buying things and reselling them at a profit. How on earth did that come about?

Every person you've ever heard of, now and throughout history, is just a tiny tiny fraction of all the people who've ever existed. The best most people can hope for is to have their name remembered by their great-grandchildren.

Sometimes I look out at our property and wonder what I could do to make it look more rednecky.

Once I witnessed a local deputy-sheriff in Ashland Kentucky being yelled by a secret-service agent. That's not something you see every day. I'd wager most people on this planet have never seen that.

Wordless Wednesday 2-2-2011

2011-02-02T15:55:00.000-05:00

Our eBay Month - January

2011-02-01T21:20:00.005-05:00

This is just me, trying to figure out if what we're doing is working or not. I thought one way to figure that out would be to compare the results of the month just ending to the previous month, and also to the same month the previous year. This time last year we were still doing consignment, but that was winding down a bit. It'll still skew the comparisons a bit, but not too tremendously. Also I want to do this without giving out actual dollar values of income and/or expenses, so hopefully I'll have figured out the best way to go about that by the time I stop typing this post.

Our eBay business lives and breathes on old standard sized (3.5 x 5.5 inch) postcards and antique photos. We do sell other things from time to time and we plan to sell more 19th century trade cards this year, but right now month in and month out it's postcards and photos.

We had a pretty good January, significantly better than December 2010, and also better than January of last year. January 2011 also out paced the monthly averages for all of 2010, so it qualifies as a good month for us. When I look a little closer, the difference between January 2011 & December 2010 becomes very obvious. Postcard sales for the month were almost identical - both in the total sold and the amount of money we received for them. Sales of photos, however, were significantly higher in Jan than in Dec. We generally sell photos for more than we do postcards, so that was good for us.

This is a trend I've noticed. Frequently it's the sale of photographs that determines if we have a good month or not. Our postcard sales seem remarkably steady. The photo sales are less so, and I don't really know why we sold significantly more photos than normal in January. We have some repeat customers and one person (bless his heart) bought several, but it doesn't account for the difference. All I know to do is to keep doing what we're doing & hope the sales keep increasing.

I do plan on increasing sales of Trade Cards - 19th century cards usually with pictures and a write up advertising products and businesses. People collected these cards back in the late 1800's, and they still do today. Hopefully this will help boost sales.

About 20% of our total sales last month were to international customers, a higher percentage than normal. About half of our international sales last month went to our Canadian customers, and I thank every one of them. The others went to Australia, Ireland, Luxemborg, Italy, UK, Japan, France & Germany. I thank all of them too.

Still haven't figured out a satisfactory way of writing this up without using dollar amounts. I guess percentages will have to do, because actual dollar amounts just aint gonna happen. It appears that in January 2011 we earned 20%+ more than we did in December 2010, and about 30% more than the 2010 monthly averages. That's a decent month for us.

Finished 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. At last.

2011-01-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

Lordy, I'm glad that's over. It was a strange little book, the type where you just have to let stuff go sometimes.

If you drew two circles and labeled one Kafka & one Marquez, there would be some overlap, but not that much. For me it was a lot easier to follow than Kafka, but I saw some similarities.   They both mix in reality with unreality, but yet treat the unreality as if it were real. In Kafka's Metamorphosis, a guy turned into a bug, and people didn't freak out & run away, they tried to talk to him (it). In Marquez's village of Macondo, the whole town at one time or another experienced a couple of years of insomnia, almost 5 solid years of rain, and various other miraculous things happened to individual people along the way.

I begin to see the book as a series of stories. My favorite was the one where Jose Arcadio Buendia, the family patriarch, discovered on his own that the world was round, centuries after this had become common knowledge. I liked the stories surrounding Remedios the Beauty who was so beautiful that one day she just acended into heaven, along with a set of Aramanta's favorite sheets. I've taken to referring to our dog as "Pickles the Beauty", but I'm afraid she'll get the big head.   I liked the stories of Jose Arcadio Segundo & Areliano Sequndo, who were twins and would fool people by switching identities as children. They did it so often that Ursula (their great-grandmother) was convinced they had got themselves mixed up. Aureliano had the personalities of all the Jose Arcadios, and Jose Arcadio had the personality of all the Aureliano's. They died on the same day, in the end the pall bearers were drunk and got the coffins mixed up so that they were buried in the other's grave. Which may have been correct after all.   In every generation there was one (usually an Aureliano, the exception was Jose Segundo) who spent a lot of time in an old room trying to figure out manuscripts left behind by a mystic gypsy.

I started reading this book back in November.   It usually doesnt take me this long to read through a book, and I have no excuses for this one. I just wasn't into it for some reason. I have this stupid bit of pride that I'm not going to let any book get the best of me. So I read the stupid thing, and parts of it were quite good, parts quite funny and parts I just struggled through like trudging through knee deep mud. Its done. On to something else.

A little bit of mind wandering nerve damage, perhaps.

2011-01-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had a hearing test and all is well, except I have a very slight loss at the highest tones in one ear. This means I've either suffered some minor nerve damage along the way, or my mind was wandering during part of the test.

Either scenario is extremely plausible.

I worked for a few years in an environment where very loud noises were common place and we didn't really have adequate hearing protection. This, I think, was one of the benefits of not having a union.

Also my mind wanders all the time. So, who knows.

Wordless Wednesday 1-19-2011

2011-01-19T13:08:00.000-05:00

Wordless Wednesday 1-12-2011

2011-01-12T15:49:00.000-05:00

My .02 on Huckleberry Finn

2011-01-08T14:33:00.005-05:00

It's been in the news lately that a new edition of Huckleberry Finn is being published, with the "n-word" expunged, replaced with the word "slave".   A lot of people think this is a good thing, that it doesn't change the story and perhaps because of this change a lot more students will be allowed to read it as part of a high school curriculum.   But a lot of other people feel that it is censorship and by removing that word you remove some of the power and meaning the book.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug. There is a reason he used that word.

I read Huckleberry Finn the first time when I was 11 years old. I read it on my own, not part of a school assignment or anything, complete with all 200 + instances of the 'n-word'.   At age 11, I knew well enough that I should not go repeating that word amongst my classmates. I new it's connotations and history. Much later I read Huckleberry Finn to my son, the very same book I had read as a child, one chapter at a time when he was quite young - much too young to grasp the finer points. When I read this to my son, I did exactly what this person who is publishing a revised version is doing - I substituted the word "slave" for the "n-word". But here is the difference - my son was 5 or 6 years old at the time, an age when kids repeat everything they've heard. I'm pretty sure he wasn't old enough to understand that he should not go slinging this word around the playground.

By the time people are old enough to read this on their own, they should be able to distinguish between differences in usage and connotations of words in the mid-19th century and the early 21st century. They should have a grasp of context.

The book was published in 1884, and is set some 30-35 years earlier, in the 1850s. It starts in Missouri, a state where slavery was legal at the time, and ends in the deep south, mainly because Huck and Jim fell asleep and missed their intended destination of Cairo, Illinois. (In reality, Jim probably would not have found much sympathy in Cairo, Illinois, but that's reality, and Huckleberry Finn was fiction). But anyway, along the way there are all kinds of people, descriptions of Mississippi River life, humor, and some astute social commentary.

Huckleberry Finn may have been the first major novel to make use of dialect, or at least the first American one. I think I read somewhere that Mark Twain used 7 dialects for his characters, but I'm not sure. When I read it at age 11, I had no trouble understanding most the language used.  Much of it was very similar to the way my grandparents spoke, and even though I didn't use most of the words or phrases in my everyday speech, they were very familiar to me.   I didn't realize it at the time, but this gave me a bit of an advantage in understanding this book. Anyway,  Jim, the uneducated slave, spoke differently than Huckleberry who had a little bit of education forced upon him. Huck spoke slightly differently than Tom Sawyer, who attended school more regularly. Huck's father was as uneducated as Jim, but spoke differently than either Huck or Jim, because he had a different background. They all spoke differently than the Widow Douglas, who tortured poor ol' Huck with manners and religion. And none of them spoke as articulately as Judge Thatcher, who was quite well educated. (An aside: I always thought Judge Thatcher may have been a bit of a crook. Can't prove it, but in the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer", Huck had come into a bunch of money as a result of an encounter with Indian Joe, and in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Judge Thatcher seemed a little too agreeable to manage Huck's 'fortune').

What I'm getting at is that Mark Twain wrote the book with the characters speaking American English as it was spoken in by various strata of society in Missouri in the 1850s.   I am sure the "n-word" was used at that time by people of all races without a second thought. I don't know that it had the same connotations or meanings then that it has now.   I do know that the connotations and meaning it has now are not good.
Writing dialect, getting it right and being consistent is difficult.  If you remove this word from the book you weaken part of the author's attempt at authenticity and reality. It skews the portrait of life in the 1850s.

Does it matter?  Maybe not. It won't change people's lives one way or another. Neither will painting a Hitler mustache on the Mona Lisa, but I hope no one does it. However, I think if you can't handle reality in literature you should stick to sit-coms on TV, where (sarcasm alert) they'd never ever dream of using stereotypes or offensive language.

Still reading 100 years of solitude. Sigh.......

2011-01-07T16:12:00.001-05:00

I've been reading this book forever. I stopped for awhile initially because I was trying to adjust to my very first prescription for bi-focals. And delayed picking it up again because I wasn't sure I wanted to put myself through what reading this book was going to put me through.

I understand that many actually consider this book to be honest to goodness literature. I believe it.

I can tell it's an exceptional book. The characters are great, there's a lot of subtle humor and observations in it, it has some mystical elements, and on more than one occasion it happily ignores the laws of physics.

I'm at the point where the story is going to be about Jose Arcadio Segundo and Aurielio Segundo, and I just not sure I want to put forth the effort to get to know these characters. I've made it to my 4th generation of Jose Arcadio's and Aurielio's, surely that's enough. Sufferin' Cats. And the first Aurielio, the Colonel and their grandfather, had 17 boys by 17 women, and named them all Aurielio. Why not stick a Rafael or an Enrico in there? And Ursula (their great-grandmother & the family matriarch) is apparently going to live forever, but that remains to be seen. But with the Segundos it's a whole new story and I'm just not identifying with anything. At the moment Aurielo is talking to a ghost and wallpapering the house with 1 peso notes, and has become wealthy because all his livestock procreates at an abnormal rate. Not quite sure what Jose Arcadio is up to, but I'll find out before long.

I don't know. Normally a book like this is right up my alley. Maybe I'm just tired of thinking. I never really liked books about "families".

So anyway, I've decided to take the plunge and finish this book. It'll be a happy day when I'm done.

Wordless Wednesday 1-5-2011

2011-01-05T15:12:00.001-05:00

Our eBay Year - 2010

2011-01-02T15:50:00.002-05:00

Well the totals are in - I know that 'cause I figured them out. And in my continuing effort to make sense of things and have a little bit of predictability I look through the spreadsheet and search for patterns. I do this off and on as the mood strikes, but the end of a year seems to be an especially good time.

Comparing our 2010 business to our business in 2009 or earlier is like comparing apples & oranges. That is because we decided to stop doing consignment sales. In 2009 & 2008 a good chunk of our sales were consignment. We made some money off of it, and I think we pleased our customers for the most part, but turns out it's a ton of work and extra record keeping, and we just decided to stop doing it, on a large scale anyway. We might sell something for someone every now and then, but we are not actively seeking consignment customers.

As a result the vast majority of the money we made on this business this year came as the result of a couple of people sitting at a large folding table in a room in a house listing and selling postcards and antique photos on eBay. Because we decided to stop doing consignments, our net sales (after expenses) was about $36.00 a month less this year than last.   It's worth it.

Also, eBay made a major change in it's pricing structure at the end of March. Our immediate adjustment to what amounted to a major increase in fees was to concentrate on fixed priced listings rather than auction listings. At one time it was not uncommon for us to have 200 or more auctions going a week, now we may only run 20 auctions a week. The vast majority of our offerings are fixed price buy-it-now listings. I have a feeling that we did exactly what eBay, for whatever reason, wanted us to do. It was a major change for us.

We sell a lot of postcards, it is the core of our business right now. In the May/June time frame we made an adjustment in shipping costs - essentially we offer free shipping on postcard "singles". Apparently it works - 63% of our postcard sales came in the 2nd half of the year. The downside is eBay takes more in fees when you offer free shipping. As a seller I'd get to keep more money if I sold something for $10 with a $2 shipping charge, than I will if I sell something for $12 with free shipping, because eBay charges fees only on the sale price.   As a buyer you've spent $12 either way, but it must be psychological, because it seems that $12 & free shipping will sell more frequently that $10 and any amount of shipping charge.

Antique Photos, the other major item we sell, seemed to remain pretty steady throughout the year. We do have a shipping charge on those, and we made no major changes in that this year.

We didn't sell as many postcards this year as last, but that's a bit misleading - last year we sold many more large lots (groups of 200 or 300 postcards) than we did this year. We decided not to sell as many large lots, because we were not getting the prices that we wanted.   So even though we sold fewer postcards, the price per postcard we received was significantly higher.

The Antique photos were another story though - we sold about 20% more of them this year than last, at a slightly higher price.

I've discovered most of our sales came on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday.

Most of our postcards sales are of US state and town views, with California leading the way.   No surprise there.

Our best selling non-state topic - art. Somewhat, but not much of a surprise.

We sell internationally, figuring money is money no matter where it comes from. This year we sent items to two dozen countries or so, alphabetically from Argentina to Zambia. Yep, we sent a postcard to continental Africa this year, a first for us. Canada, Australia, the UK, France & Germany were our best customers. International sales accounted for about 12% of our overall sales, so it's worth it.

The business has changed quite a bit since we started it, and I wonder how it's going to change this year. Very little is static, it will be interesting to see.