August 2008 Archives

Watching Obama's speech on YouTube. He's saying the right things, much more people-oriented. He might earn my respect yet.

Today I found a grasshopper resting on a yellow begonia.

Do I need to say anything more?

Click on the images to enlarge.

When I stepped out my front door a bit ago to gather the mail, I saw Hobart (the groundhog that lives on my property) was there eating an apple.

Normally he bolts as soon as I open the door, but this time he just continued his munching, which allowed me to snap a few photos with my iPhone.

Alas, they didn't turn out too well, and for the same reason that Hobart didn't scamper away.

I was in the shade and he was blinded by the sun, so he couldn't see me.

I just realized, I haven't watched any of the Olympics coverage.

Hmmm...

I have a lot of books that I doubt that I'll ever read again, so I decided to try Amazon's reseller program. I offered two books for sale.

The first was a hard cover edition of a recent bestseller that is about to come out in paperback. My copy was in excellent condition, so I offered it at ten dollars, which was about four dollars below the next seller. The advantage of having the lowest price is that it appears at the top of the list.

The book sold within a couple hours.

Amazon provided a shipping label and packing list for me to print out; so I went to the Post Office this morning and mailed it off. Amazon even let me send an email to the buyer, to let her know that it was on its way.

Using standard shipping Amazon adds $3.99 to cover postage; that proved to be not enough. I ended up paying about five dollars to mail it; that included the cost of the mailer and a 75 cent charge to track the package.

So factoring in the mailing costs, after Amazon takes its cut, I will only clear five dollars on the sale.

The other book was a paperback edition of a book that is temporarily out of print. Some resellers on Amazon are asking well over a hundred dollars for it.

When I listed it, the lowest price was about 69 dollars. I offered my copy for $39.99.

This morning I saw that three of the other resellers had lowered their prices to $39.97, i.e., two cents below my price. Obviously they wanted the top spot on the list.

So I lowered my price to $34.99. Within an hour one of those guys lowered his price to two cents below mine.

Well, it didn't do him any good. It looks like my copy has already been sold!

If we lived in a rational world, a person's sex life would remain private.

Alas, we don't. So we'll have to endure all the gasbags foaming at the mouth over John Edwards admitting that he had an affair.

Already I'm hearing the question from folks who ought to know better: "why did he do it?"

Anyone who has to ask that question doesn't understand much about humans.

He did it because he's a guy and she was willing. It's that simple. Next subject.

I wish the media would devote half as much attention to important issues, like, say, a president who lied his way into a war that has resulted in the deaths and and ruined lives of untold thousands of people.