Dora and Eleni Goofin' Around
I'm posting this from TypePad's new iPhone app and it feels very slick. Good job Six Apart!
I'm posting this from TypePad's new iPhone app and it feels very slick. Good job Six Apart!
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.
A bit ago I heard my neighbor outside raking leaves in his yard and I couldn't believe it... on Christmas? There's nothing better to do?
I remember when I was younger being totally bored the rest of Christmas day because no stores were open and I couldn't do much besides just sitting around with my friends. Now that I'm older there's not much to do (since we live so far away from our families) so we'll be cooking a turkey most of the afternoon to use the time. I could play some video games, but for me that's not really an all-day activity like it is for some people. Our gym is closed so I can't workout, the malls are probably closed so we can't walk around, and the turkey will be keeping us preoccupied most of the day so going to the movies is probably out too.
It's times like these that I should just sit down and read a book.
I'm starting in on one of my New Year's Resolutions early this year, and that's to pay more attention to my personal brand on the web, mainly as it relates to old sites I no longer update. I haven't updated this blog since July 2006 and now it's about to be January 2008! Better late than never!
It was very nice of TypePad to simply keep the account in suspended/deactivated status instead of deleting all the content. I hopped back in (username: "mike" since I was one of the first people to have a TypePad account!) and spent about 20 minutes deleting comment spam by the dozen. Then, since my old design was tied into CSS files and images that were residing on a server I no longer maintained, I downgraded my account and threw up a generic design.... at least for the moment. My new personal site (not a blog, but it will aggregate content I write from other sites) will be launching in a few weeks, so after that's done perhaps I'll put up a custom design here. Either way, I'm going to try to get back to posting but only about personal things, nothing about technology. It'll be hard for me but I used to do it for so long that I'm sure it'll be like riding a bicycle :)
So to people hitting this from your RSS reader, stop by and say hi! It's been so long that I don't think anyone is still subscribed, but hey, you never know.
My new Blackberry is slowly changing my life. We bought a house and move in a few weeks! Some idiot couldn't park and scratched the hell out of my new G35 :( My boy Adam came down to visit and now he wants to live here as well. My puppy is 42lbs now and growing still!
That is all ;)
Haha, exactly like I said ;)
The bottom right corner of the homepage, with more pictures available here! Sweet!
Update: RIT updated that spot and Eleni is replaced with some random chick. Her pic can still be found here.
I don't know how Paul does it, and neither does Colin. For those of you who don't know, Paul is (my boss?) the genius behind 9rules. Can't wait to hang out with him again in about a month down in Austin!
