June 3, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 3, 2023, Taylor never showed.
Five years ago today: June 3, 2019, downtown Nashville.
Nine years ago today: June 3, 2015, the doogie-trail hatchet.
Random years ago today: June 3, 2007, this movie ain’t American!

           No time to get bored around here. Another step in the vacuum tube adventure. It took most of the morning, but the operation is up and running. The last serious use I made of eBay was at the old Thrift on Biscayne Blvd. And today it has been made about 20x more complicated. It took hours to update addresses, shipping info, and to wade through processes that used to be simple. It’s a telling lesson that nothing new has been invented on the Internet way of business, it just gets more and more complicated over time as each jerkface that comes along thinks he's smart enough to patch up the accumulated crap code of 30 years..

           Here’s the first four listings and it took 43 minutes where it should have been less than 10. Gosh, that picture is blurry. Yes, yes it is. If I wanted you knowing my shipping address, I’d post it. What’s happened is over the years, Ebay has dumbed down to match its clientele, which appear to be mostly people without the aptitude for anything else. They keep adding feature after feature to accommodate stupid sellers that the web page loses track of itself.
           The longest delays were pages that came up with no back button, no forward button, and finally closing the page wiped out your work. Overall, there is a singular lack of things useful to the more intelligent user. But the difference is clear, where other users need to learn how eBay works, I have to unlearn proper business and Internet principles. I mean, to me people who do not understand the need for a back button should not be allowed near a business computer. It turns out you need a mouse with an extra button, and fortunately I found one.

           Another pesky quirk (with eBay) is how idiotic errors get into the system by majority rule. Some moron posts a tube with an error, and fifty people copy the error. It’s fine once you learn which are valid tube numbers, but not so fine when it causes the median price to be significantly too low. As with other projects, I tend to work until my cut is around $100, then after that try to shorten the time it takes to get there. If I count only the time spent listing the tubes, which includes the photograph, description, etc, I’m making a decent $25 per hour—IF the tubes sell for median price. Sound good? Not really. That’s what I used to make in the early 90s.

Picture of the day.
Flag of Albania.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           The Prez is back, and like myself, tends to just hightail it through Georgia without stopping but for gas. He drove the last 600 miles in one shot, that must be fun with the family in the van. I’ll give him 24 hours to decompress, then time to go over our best material, as in best for this type of gig. I’m lucky to find a guitarist to work with on this level, you watch, he will call for an extra rehearsal this week, where others have to be prodded. Then again, he now knows first hand what a difference logistics and planning played in all this. Too many guitarists never get over their initial skepticism, that’s fine, where are they today?

           Another unusual aspect of this duo is we never argue over songs. Don’t even ask me how often a band has broken up because the guitar player was at odds. They always have a zillion reasons why the song they want to play is better, but never state the true reason. That they like the song regardless of what the room or band thinks. By contrast, we have quite a set of “rules and rolls” that each tune obeys, for instance we play “Party Till The Money Runs Out” not because it is a good song, but because it is the only Conga we know.

           I listed another ten tubes, just to memorize the procedure. Yep, they’ve messed it up royally. They started off to make the entry screen look somewhat like the actual display, but that always takes a lot more brains than your average computer department can muster. Then came along the ad people who injected those lame ads across the middle of each display. But the good news is I can easily list $300 a day in around and hour. I have no clue how the eBay fee structure works, which is probably because they designed it that way.
           Here’s a generic tube list picture, this shows a paradox. If the listing says the tube is new in the box, this means the box has been opened and I’ve learned that is an alarm signal. There is such a spread in pricing, there must be severe quality differences and I’ve come to suspect the tube boxes are intentionally weakly-designed to expose tampering.

           At the bookstore, I chatted up a blonde lady at the till. She gave me the discount on an amusing book called “100 Deadly Skills”. Turned out to be very interesting reading. My favorite chapter so far is counter-surveillance. It covers most of the techniques I used as a lad because I grew up amongst snoops. This book gave names to many of the methods I used. A couple you might like is when you have a zippered bag, always leave the zipper on thumb-width open. And the old leave any pens or notes the same distance from the edge of the table, and where possible leave anything like a cup handle pointing north when you set it down to leave the room.
           Some of the newer techniques were a computer camera app. It memorizes a scene and alerts you later about any objects that moved since you activated it. It was as close to a nothing day as I could make it and I liked the peace and quiet. No music all day, and listening to Gore Vidal finally got to me. I ejected the CD and don’t know if I’ll even try later. I’ve come to detest the guy. The professional shadow box Wilford donated, well, I can’t figure it out Is there a piece missing? He got if from a friend who has a photography business, so I’ll ask but this isn’t science.

           My guess is my posts will be skimpy for a few days while I build up a stockpile on eBay. What used to be a simple procedure is not a ton of back & forth. One change takes up to five minutes, making sure pictures, titles, descriptions, and specs all match up. It’s a classic example of bad planning and too may cooks, but also another instance where first-to-market wins in the computer Olympics. Put another way, the eBay listing page is an dog’s breakfast, yet it plainly has it’s appeal to millions of users who just don’t know any better, yup-yup. I mean, when you open the page to enter a new listing, what should appear at the top? The title, right? Not according to eBay.
           The site is also badly coded. The default behavior on dozens of check boxes has been randomly changed. Some pages your cursor lands on the relevant hot spot, other times you hunt for it. It takes minimum five mouse clicks to upload a picture. Fine print has to be at least 14 point font. The price suggestion algorithm is so shitty, I’ve taken to looking each price up by manually. There has been a broad gap in ability to grasp statistics (like average sales price) on the Internet from the millennisal class onward, but what do you expect from people who cannot tell time, read cursive, or drive a standard? Well, okay, I suck at driving a standard, but I can do it.

           And don't ask about today's last laff. It's the only funny picture I had left on file, proably a BAB insult post.

Last Laugh