antigreg :
April 3, 2001 — Don't talk to strangers
In an ongoing trend toward me excerpting things only vaguely worthy of appearing in my journal, I've decided to paste in what I've finished so far for a section soon to be added to the antigreg features page. While still untitled, the gist of the articles will involve my experiences trying to make a living on Ebay selling things that wouldn't make sense for people to bid on. If my summer job falls through, after all, these are skills that will be worth having when it comes time to try to feed myself next year.
I know that at first glance this doesn't sound like a very entertaining feature. But that's where you're wrong. A little.
In either case, item number one for antigreg's stupid Ebay tricks is to bear the following description:
Unfashionable CD player got you down? Have we got the solution for you.
It all started a year ago. I was taking the bus to school when a life-long friend of mine informed me that he was purchasing a new portable CD player and would be willing to part with his old one. And cheap!
I was quick to buy it, and my Sony D-ES55 Discman with electronic shock protection (squared!) has served me well for the year that I've had it. But alas, last week the ribbon connecting the LCD display and the play control unit detached and began to prevent me from actually using the CD player to play CDs. But my loss is your gain!
Now you can carry around this sporty, street-styled Sony Discman and be the envy of friends and family alike, all for a low, reserve-free price. Great for tricking people into thinking you can't hear them: Even if there's no music playing, that obnoxious guy on the subway won't bother you if he thinks you're too busy listening to the music stylings of any number of popular rock and/or roll groups.
But more than that, this Discman is a real conversation piece. When friends of yours say, "Wow, that's the niftiest darned portable compact disc player I've ever seen," you can be quick to add, "And it doesn't even work!" Can you imagine the oohs and awws? I can. And they're worth bidding for.
For the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that you aren't interested in a Discman that doesn't work. That's fine; I feel for you. I am, after all, selling said Discman over Ebay, so we're more alike than you might think. But consider this: I'm sure you have a sibling or cousin too young to yet enjoy a working Discman, one who can see the pleasure in all things blue and shiny. Or, better yet, you could see this CD player as the fixer-upper's dream that it is. Not only does it not work now, the LCD display hadn't been working properly for months prior to the final death of the player. Imagine the pride you or a loved one could feel if you got it to work again. Now, with that image in your head, move on down to the bid section and get a piece of the action.
And remember, because I love you, buyer pays actual shipping charges, and I guarantee that this Discman will be dead on arrival.
With a little luck (and with "RARE! OOP!" in the title), I'm hoping to make $10 off of this one. I'll let you know the item number once I start the bidding.
Well that was fun. I've practically written enough to post this journal already and I've yet to even start on a description of my day. If only it were always this easy...
I woke up reasonably early today and managed to show up for my lab an hour before it began. I played with the multimeter for awhile and learned that the reason for my difficulties last time I was trying to use it might've been closely tied to the fact that I'd been wiring it into the circuit in series when it explicitly said to wire it in parallel to measure volts. I blame my lab tech. In the end, though, we finished the lab with time to spare.
After the lab (and during the lab, too, if you want to get picky about it), I didn't get very much accomplished. The only good news is that I can feel the buzz over Bran Van 3000 building again -- emails and message board posts are finally starting to come back to where they were a few weeks ago after dropping to almost nothing.
Meanwhile, I received one of the strangest phone calls I've ever received at around 7:30PM. It started out simply as someone calling from the Toronto Star in the hope of getting me to subscribe. The conversation ended up lasting a solid twenty minutes or more as I learned about the educational history of the caller's family, among other things. He seemed so nice and well-intentioned that I actually kept the small talk going for awhile, since he was probably just lonely from many hours of having people rudely hang up on him. I hope I'll be able to find a stranger to talk to me for twenty minutes when I'm left calling people to ask if they'd like their chimney cleaned or long distance plan thrown into turmoil...
I'm starting to get sleepy, and I know that if I don't edit this now, I'll be kicking myself when I see all the mistakes I've made when I read it over in the morning. Too bad I couldn't keep up the trend from yesterday that had people actually enjoying a journal for a change...
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Contact : Greg Sullivan, PO Box 533, Station C, Toronto ON M6J 3P6, Canada; greg@antigreg.com.