Buying and Selling Online

Buying and selling stuff on the Internet has become the standard for doing business these days. I've been buying audio equipment online for my job for years, but lately I've been getting involved more and more with the selling side of ecommerce. The company that I work for is even starting to sell some of their products on Ebay. So far, setting up the accounts on Paypal and Ebay has gone smoothly. Writing the first ads and getting the products ready for sale, is where it gets interesting. I will be talking more about my experiences with selling on Ebay in the coming months.

The truck pictured here is my 1997 Dodge Dakota, which I posted on Craig's List today. I really don't need a truck these days. I found a mid-size suv that would better suit my needs, but of course, I have to sell the truck before I can get something else. The trade-in price for a used vehicle at a car dealer is too low to consider. There are a lot of high mileage cars at dealers right now for equally high prices. I usually try to upgrade every 5 to 7 years, but I've had this truck now for going on 10 years. I'm afraid that cycle will become even less frequent if my wages continue to go down and the price of cars and trucks keeps going up.

Bird House

Another successful wood working project is now on display in my backyard. I like watching "The New Yankee Workshop" on PBS from time to time. They show you step by step how to make antique furniture, but they make it look too easy. I can't imagine that there are too many people out there that have the assortment of wood working tools that they have on that show.

The chipmunks are nowhere to be seen this weekend. Even the birds are taking a day off. Maybe it's because we haven't had any rain for the last four or five weeks. I dug down two feet to plant the post for the bird house and it was bone dry all the way down. Despite the dry conditions, my hillbilly neighbors had a bonfire going in their back yard today. It wouldn't be so bad, if we didn't have to smell the smoke, and ash didn't fall on my car. I'm sure it's illegal to have an open pit fire in the city limits, but you can't really say anything to people these days because you might get shot. I've told my girlfriend that her relatives are rednecks. She says that hillbillies is much worse than a rednecks. I didn't think it was possible, but now I believe her. I guess we'll just have to wait until they burn their house down.

Ever-Green Update

This week I updated the Ever-Green Services website, a lawn care and landscaping business located in Eau Claire, WI. Their web site is hosted on GoDaddy.com. Bob Parsons, the founder of Go Daddy, seems like the most unlikely person to be the owner of a technology company, but I have to admit, he definitely knows a thing or two about marketing. The Go Daddy website is a bit cluttered because they have rapidly expanded into so many different aspects of web hosting. Their "WebSite Tonight" product, which allows someone to create a web site with no web design experience, is what Ever-Green Services is using.

Now you might ask, why hire a professional web designer to manage a web site on "WebSite Tonight"? Well, unless you have web design and graphics design experience, all you will end up with is a poorly designed web site. "WebSite Tonight" gives you the tools to make a decent looking web site, but if you've never built a web site before, it may still be a challenge. At first I was frustrated working within the boundaries of a web design tool that was designed for someone with no experience, but now I wish I had more clients who saw the value in having an expert manage their Go Daddy site.

Speaking of anniversaries, in October it will be one year since my girlfriend published her first novel, "In a Sense of Love". To mark the occasion, we are lowering the price from $19.99 to $18.98 and have also reduced the price of the download version and the Kindle version.

District 9 Movie Review

This weekend I saw the movie District 9. It's a science fiction flick about a colony of aliens who get stranded on Earth. There has been a lot of hype about this movie's underlying theme of prejudice, but that just makes it more realistic. Who wouldn't be a little upset if they had to live next to someone who looked like a giant shell fish. The first third of the movie is done documentary style to explain how the aliens ended up in South Africa in a giant slum. But, its almost to the point where you think the whole darn movie is going to be a fake documentary. Luckily, things get a little better in the second half.

The aliens look very realistic and the special effects are integrated with the typical precision we have come to expect from a movie produced by Peter Jackson. The end battle between the main character and the military thugs in charge of District 9 will have you looking for the replay button. The action scenes pay homage to recent movies like Iron Man and Transformers. Beyond that, the movie has a few too many things that don't make sense. Like why the alien ship, apparently out of power, was able to hover in the sky. Or, why the aliens didn't use their own weapons to fight against the repressive conditions that they are forced to live in. I'm sure a lot of this will be cleared up in three years. That's when the alien ship will return to get the rest of the colony. Or, as we call it here on Earth, the sequel.