Poetlady's Craft Store

Poetlady's Craft Store is on the web now. There are three people selling their handmade crafts right now. Designer Diaper Cakes, Mary's Dream Catchers, and Kara's Greeting Cards. The craft store is designed to be a place where people can list their crafts for sale. There are forms on each page that you can use to make initial contact and request more information from the sellers. At this time, the pages are fairly basic because I wanted to get the information up quickly to determine if there would be any interest. I figure that, if feedback is positive, I can always make the pages look better over time. Otherwise, these days I have to put my efforts into the ideas that are producing the best results. You can see the current handmade selections at Poetlady's Craft Store.

Selling on Ebay

I'm on Ebay again, but this time I'm selling, not buying. The company that I work for is testing the Ebay waters to see if there is a market for some of their older DVD products. So far, the effort has not produced any results. Several factors could be the cause. The first is that people are going to be reluctant to buy from someone who has no feedback. The second is that you don't know if your starting bid is too high. The third is that you have no way of knowing for sure why people are not bidding on your item. Is the description poorly written? Are people turned off if you have a no return policy? Is the product in the wrong category? And lastly, you can't add a "buy it now" option, if you have never sold anything on Ebay.

You can list your item for free, but after the second re-listing, Ebay starts charging a listing fee. Auctions typically last for 7 days, so the need to re-list your item can come up quickly. There are fees for enhancing your ad with things like extra photos and fancy backgrounds, plus Ebay takes a percentage of every sale. For my third attempt at selling an item, we have lowered the starting bid by 25%. Anything below that is not worth our time, since that price is almost 90% below the original price. It could always be that the item we are trying to sell is just not something the average person wants or needs. I figure this will give me some experience selling on Ebay. And who knows, maybe it will eventually give me the courage to start selling some of my own stuff on Ebay... or not.

Sony Webbie Camcorder

I recently purchased a Sony Webbie MHS-CM1 HD Camcorder for one of our seminar speakers and thought I would share a few comments on this little video camera. As you can see it comes in three colors, I'm not sure why they decided on orange and purple. My guess is that they thought those colors would appeal to the younger crowd. I settled on the silver model without much deliberation. The first thing you will discover is that the camera is very small, 1.7 inches wide and 2.4 inches tall, and weighs only 7 ounces. You can easily put it in your purse or pocket.

The Webbie has received some mixed reviews from consumers, mainly because the people who didn't like it should have purchased a different camera to begin with. The Webbie is a striped down version of what people have come to expect from a Sony camcorder. There is no image stabilization and the camera is reported to have problems handling low light situations. The built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery only lasts for 85 minutes. Zoom is 5x optical and 20x digital, which is like most entry level digital cameras. But other than that, the HD video and 5MP still photo features are impressive in such a small package. Video is stored on removable Memory Stick PRO Duo media (sold separately).

My application called for a camera that was going to be mounted on a tripod and aimed at a subject that was sitting in a chair. So, image stabilization and zoom were unimportant. The camera does look tiny when mounted on a tripod, but its size will be easy to travel with. The Webbie comes with component, composite, and USB cables. It allow you to select between three screen resolutions, 1080, 720, and standard 480. The short list of menu options makes it easy to setup without wasting a lot of time reading the manual. The 2.5 inch swivel screen feels like it could snap off and the detachable lens cap isn't very useful, but for $179 I'm hoping that it will last half as long as some of the other Sony products that I have owned.

Eat my brake dust

I've taken my 1997 Dodge Dakota out of storage and have been driving it some this week. Everything was fine, until a few days ago, when the brakes started making a grinding noise. I figured that rust had accumulated on the rotors again, so I took it in to have it fixed. It turns out that one of the brake pads was metal to metal. I had the pads and rotors replaced just last year and now it needs it again? After the work was done and I was driving home, I came to a stop light and noticed smoke coming from the front driver's side tire. The smell of brake smoke is quite noxious, so I quickly returned to the brake shop. They had to rebuild the caliper because one of the brake pads would not release.

My plan to have a small car for the summer and drive the truck in the winter is not working too well as I have to replace the brakes after the truck sits for more than a month. This summer I had been trying my best to take the truck out periodically to keep the battery fresh and the rotors from getting rust, but I guess it wasn't often enough. Let this be a warning for anyone who is letting their old gas guzzler sit for too long. Maybe Dodge Dakota's are extra hard on brakes for some reason. I've asked them to install better brake parts, but the local shops just shrug and say this is all we have. The two vehicles shown here are the GMC Envoy and the Honda Pilot. Midsize SUV's all look similar from the outside, but the quality level can be drastically different. I like the styling of the Envoy, but I'm afraid that it could be a repair shop's dream, like the Dodge Dakota. Customer reviews on Honda and Toyota products are off the charts compared to their America competitors. One of my favorite web sites to research cars is at Cars.com. They have all the information you need when shopping for your next new or used vehicle. In addition to the Midsize SUV's I also like the smaller Toyota Rav4 and the Honda CR-V. Now that I've put some money into the Dakota, I may have to keep it through the winter, but if I see something interesting on a dealer's lot, I may have to take the big trade-in loss.

Fall Weather

The leaves are starting to turn and that means fall is here. So far, there has only been a few inquires on my truck and car. There are many used vehicles for sale right now on Craigslist. It's a good way to see if the price you set is accurate. Most people go by the bluebook web sites to determine value, but that's just a starting point. If you have a high mileage vehicle, with a big engine, that nobody wants, you are going to have to go below bluebook value. Craigslist is a great place to post items for sale, but even with the warnings they post, there are still people who send scam email. Some email will offer a trade for your vehicle, or try to get you to visit an insurance estimate website. You also have to worry that someone is going to give you a bad check. There are a lot of things to be concerned about, especially when it comes to selling high dollar items like cars and trucks.

I did find several web sites that have a lot of good advice, if you are trying to sell a used vehicle. Maybe next week the right person will come along and we can get this deal done. Meanwhile, I am continuing to work on the craft directory site. Also, considering updates to the MMSN site to allow for paging of search results. As the number of shops on the list grows, there needs to be a limit on the number of results that appear on the screen. A minor detail, but it will require additional code work. I tried to make an image map show the results for a selected State, but that proved to be difficult. Image map code works fine for a URL, but posting form variables to php using an image map is another story.