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Over at Quofda today the question asked what age was my favorite so far, and I think I'm going to go with age 18.
I was 18 when I graduated from high school and went off to my freshman year at college. All of the changes of leaving high school, moving to a dorm, meeting so many new people, doing things on my own, they all combined to make my 18th year the most interesting one of my life so far.
The Wife and I just joined a new gym that is literally a Par 5 away from our house, a Snap Fitness.
I've been a Gold's member for a few years now, and haven't stepped into a new gym since college. This gym is a lot smaller, but all the equipment is state-of-the-art and brand new Cybex VR3 machines and boy are they nice. You don't really appreciate nice gym equipment until you're on brand new machines and the difference is night and day. I mainly use plate loaded machines instead of cables because it reduces the impact of momentum on your movement, and Cybex has some really, really nice plate loaded machines.
The main reason I'm writing this entry is because I just got done doing what I've always dreamed of doing, and that's working out late at night. Did I mention that Snap Fitness is a 24-hour facility? I just got done with a killer chest and lower body workout at 1:30am. Suck on that Gold's!
I've been using eBay now for about 9 years (wow... that sounds too long) and in that time I've bought and sold many things. In the early years I bought my first set of golf clubs through eBay, bought and sold Magic The Gathering cards, bought and sold computers, and a lot of other random stuff. I'm not close to a Power Seller as I was mainly a purchaser in my transactions, but I've got a pretty good feel for how eBay works and things you need to do to protect yourself.
Having said all that, I made my first bad decision with eBay in December and have just now found out about it.
For Christmas I was looking around for a particular North Face jacket for The Wife, and no local stores carried her particular style/size/color combination, mainly because it's so popular that it sells out immediately. My only hope to find it was to turn to the Internet. I've bought so many things from websites over the years that I have no real trepidation about identity theft or fraud, mainly because I live and work on the web every day that I feel confident I can make good decisions.
After looking on some websites that all had the jacket at its exact retail cost, I decided to check out eBay to see if I could find a deal. The problem with buying clothing on eBay (hot brands at least) is that just because someone says NWT, New With Tags, doesn't mean that it actually is. Hell somebody could have tried jeans on completely naked and wore them for a day with the tags on before turning around and selling them on eBay as a "brand new" item. You never know what you're going to get unless you do your homework.
North Face jackets on eBay were going like hotcakes in the month of December, mainly because North Face jackets are insanely overpriced and everyone was looking to get a deal like I was. I bid, and lost, 4 separate auctions for the particular jacket I was looking for before finding an auction that was more favorable. The seller had a 350+ rating, nearly all positives (no negatives in the last 6 months), and he or she was listing the jacket as a brand new, authentic, North Face jacket of the particular style I was gunning for. After a furious bidding war, I ended up nabbing the jacket for about $40 less than retail after shipping costs were applied.
When the package came, it was shipped from China. This freaked me out a little bit initially, but once I opened it and found a pristine North Face jacket inside with all necessary tags, my mind was put at ease.
Unfortunately, only a few weeks after giving it as a gift for Christmas, some seams are pulling apart. Once The Wife saw what was going on, she showed me, and we decided to compare the jacket against my older North Face jacket from a few years ago. The logos were different. Her new jacket's embroidered logo looked sloppy and misaligned compared to my jacket's logo.
It was a fake.
I've been in contact with the seller and he or she has agreed to refund my money 100% once I give him the tracking number for the returned jacket. I actually believe he's going to do this, mainly because I paid over $100 for the jacket and he probably paid some factory in China 1/100th of that. He could set 100 fake Chinese jackets on fire and make it up with one eBay sale.
So now I'm going to mail the jacket back to him, and wait to see what happens. Best case scenario is that I get my money Paypal'd back to me and I apply it to a real North Face jacket. Worst case scenario is that I'm out the money AND the jacket, and I fight with eBay to get his account terminated for fraud. The seller has a lot of time and effort invested in his eBay feedback rating, so I have a hunch I'll be seeing a refund, but who really knows.
I guess the moral of the story is that even when you're 100% sure you're making a good decision, you really can't be sure after all. Oh, and if something is too good to be true, it usually is.
I think the most fun I have (at least in the web industry) is when I have an idea but it's floating around in my head with only a vague outline. Normally it's just a piece of functionality I find novel, but who would use it and the technicalities around the functionality aren't hashed out yet. The idea is kicking around unbridled with more questions surrounding it than actual answers. I've got some ideas like this currently and I'm relishing the process because it's not every day that I have ideas that stick around in my thoughts for more than a few minutes. To keep the process of shaping the idea a little more organized I've been just writing the basic facts about the idea down on paper, then working with each part of the idea individually until it works more cohesively with the whole concept. I don't know if it'll work or not but putting pen to paper about something exciting in my head is exciting by itself, so it can't hurt.
