One year ago today: June 6, 2023, drove until 5:00AM.
Five years ago today: June 6, 2019, a day for puttering.
Nine years ago today: June 6, 2015, ratings, not accuracy.
Random years ago today: June 6, 2007, my first “eBay” thrift.
Mexico has a new President. A Jewish woman who was elected after all 37 of her political opponents died during the previous three months. Known as “The Doctor” (‘la doctora) for a list of scientific credentials that nobody has ever dared to dispute, political scholars can’t find any identifiable group, even within the Mexican Jewish community, that actually voted for Sheinbaum. But let’s not quibble, nothing to see here folks, move along. Same with the European parliament members who vote against sanctioning the Russians. It’s pure coincidence their family members keep being found dead in their cars. The police are too busy arresting singing teenagers.
A week from Saturday is J. D. Brown Day, officially declared that by the authority in this blog. The other day of recognition is Martin Shkreli Day, loosely around December 22, so it gets overshadowed by bigger things, but is still there. Well, time to propose a third day of recognition to a man who represents an era. That man is Fred Kaps. Fred, although he was never personally a member of the group, was the prototype millennial Before I tell you who Fred was, let’s go over just a smidgen of his qualifications for the position.
a) feels he never received proper recognition for his workFred, ( Abraham Pieter Adrianus Bongers) passed away in 1980, a man before his time. But we should not let that detract from his greatest accomplishment: serving as a model for generations who felt their everything had been stolen from them, but never felt any inclination to go get a real job. After 36 fluid ounces of deliberation, I conclude the correct day for this remembrance is April 2, the day after, shall we call it, April 1. Those who think this one through will spot the significance.
b) had a dipshit haircut because somebody told him it was fashion
c) his day job involved salt shakers and marked decks
d) was a lot older than he pretended to be
e) used unintelligible words for ordinary things
f) owned a wall full of participation trophies
g) and the list goes on.
Several more hours into eBay tells me this is not such a good idea. But it was the only way to find out, since nobody else around here ever got past the sorting stage. The template is 80% as difficult to use as the old one-by-one pages, and again suffers terrible from lack of standards. I’ll give you just one example. O a given page, the default action on text boxes should be consistent. There are two boxes for search criteria. The first one fills it with the data from your last listing. Since this may be similar, you’d think to click on this space and just change one or two numbers. Nope, it wipes out what was there and you have to type in the entire new entry. The second box for reasons unknown at this time, needs a duplicate of what’s in the first box. Instead, it is blank and will not auto-fill if you begin typing. But if you try to paste in the first field, it only turns the field the select color. Try to type it now, and it will backfill the number—twice. Both what you tried to paste and what you typed. The entire eBay data entry process is full of these asinine quirks.
Later, a rainstorm, so I entered another batch. Up yours, eBay, for now improving a thing in twenty years. During the posting process, there are continual snags, such as no indicator after a mouse click. You get off the phone and now, did you or did you not click enter? If you leave the page to check, it destroys your listing. So you open a second copy of eBay, you do have a wide screen I hope, and that makes the process slower than manual. Screw you, eBay.
Northeast Brazil seacoast.
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Ray-B texted back, he’s staying home. Rehearsal y’day went smooth, we picked out 33 tunes that fit the bill and we are ready. Since we chose tunes that pass for country way back when we started this band, the list easily contains some of our best material. When he visited Philadelphia, the Prez went to a bluegrass festival, must have been quite the show. He did not know, and neither did I, that the Martin guitar factory was in that area. He got a mini-tour. They have a museum display with famous Martins owned by Johnny Cash and Hank Williams (Sr.), however to me they just look like more guitars.
And, wisely if you ask me, he flew the family home and drove the van back down by himself. Good thinking. He also toured the battle site at Gettysburg with his kids, which to my surprise held everyone’s interest. They’ve set up the area so tourists can see the fields of fire of the troops and such. Remind me to take a look if I ever get there. It was 90°F by noon, I’m opting for a siesta. Oh, and the Mexican man who they said contracted the bird flu was a severe diabetic, had chronic kidney failure, and died more than six weeks ago.
The Nashville mandolin player who was at the Wednesday jam is back in town and playing with his own group this Friday (tomorrow). I’ll be there. The Prez seems to have missed the signs. The other guy had planned not to play while on holidays but ran out to his van to get his instrument the instant he heard of play. This is actually typical of the Prez and similar personalities to downplay what are truly grand and significant differences in what is going on. And that makes sense because to the untrained ear, they are subtle. Another example is how the Prez actually feels most bass players could play like I do it they so decided to do so one day.
That will bring me up to what to do on another hot Florida afternoon. The data entry part of the eBay sequence is not the botheration. You see, I’m very used to keying in long, meaningless lists, and I have another database I’d like to build. Over the years, I’ve accumulated hundreds of DVDs now collecting dust. Researching what is on-line suggests a number of ways to sell DVDs in bulk, but the best are handily those that offer your pick from a very large selection. There are many batch sales that say to look under things like “Title” but I have yet to find what they are talking about. My DVDs are listed by title, most famous actor, and rating.
The hitch once again is the filters are applied to all listings. If you choose an individual seller, unless they have categorized their own stock, it’s all or nothing. There may be a site that has addressed this issue but I’ve not landed on it yet. A site I can go to and filter out, say, all their comedy PG-13s and pay for shipping just the once. Ray-B says look into OfferUp, which I am doing right now. So far, it seems to be a phone app and I’m not keen on spending any more time on a phone that I have to. You get that a lot with people like me who’ve worked for the phone company.
We find an immediate red flag. OfferUp will not work on a computer, only on a smart phone. Several sources say no bank account is required, but the OfferUp site state rule number one Is you MUST set up a bank account within 90 days. Examining the eBay and Offerup sites show the same thing. They post a picture of a stack of DVDs and you specify which ones you want. Then, I suppose, they manually go pick the item for you. Let’s go back and find the “Title”field. Ah, here’s something. A drop menu called select DVD.
And one more batch of 14, took over an hour. Another annoyance is eBay, like Google, snoops at your computer under the guise of “security”. My system has always been set up to behave like a new computer every log-on. So now with each eBay listing, I get my inbox flooded with eBay notices that a new device is using my account. And of course, no way to tell eBay to mind their own business. Not when they rely on customer stupidity to shape their own thinking. And my cookie deleting add-on is constantly at work when eBay is on-line. Ray-B replies that OfferUp allows local sales, same as Craigslist. That means meeting up with creeps and losers, but business works that way.
ADDENDUM
I’ll tell you what is more significant today. Without a whimper from the news, the Supreme Court ruled it is not illegal for States to issue their own currency. This was in regards to Texas where they plan to issue gold-backed currency. There is a catch, it will be digital. So it is little more that a ploy that will result in nothing but evil.
In other news, it seems Biden shit himself again, this time in France.
